Scientific racism in Germany/Arthur de Gobineau/An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races/Book 3

Book 3 of Arthur de Gobineau's work An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races is subtitled Civilization Spreading from Central Asia to the South and Southeast. Gobineau uses the third book of his essay to reinforce his central claim that all civilizational achievements originate exclusively from the "white race." To this end, he constructs an Aryan original homeland in Central Asia or Siberia, which he seeks to substantiate through archaeological finds and mythical traditions. From this supposed primordial high civilization, he derives all later white peoples. India and China serve him as contrasting examples intended to confirm his racial-political assumptions. India appears as the positive model: Aryan conquerors, he argues, preserved their racial distinctiveness through the caste system and thereby created the most enduring and spiritually elevated civilization. China, by contrast, is interpreted as a negative case. There, rebellious Kshatriyas are said to have promoted equality, intermixed with Malays and "Yellows," and thus produced a materialistic, stagnant civilization devoid of spiritual depth. From this juxtaposition, Gobineau derives his guiding principle: racial separation guarantees cultural greatness and longevity, whereas equality and mixture necessarily lead to decline. In reality, however, his examples rest on fundamental errors: the Indian caste system was not a racial-hygienic institution, the Chinese civilization was not founded by Indo-Aryan groups, and the Siberian archaeological finds provide no evidence of a prehistoric Aryan ur-culture. Content of Book 3 The Aryans this sectionGobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 183ff Christian LassenChristian Lassen 1847 Indische Altertumskunde Bonn 2 volumes. https://archive.org/details/indischealterthu01lass_0 Volume 1 2025-11-12 https://archive.org/details/indischealtert02lass Volume 2 2025-11-12 Heinrich EwaldHeinrich Ewald 1844 Ueber die Saho-Sprache in Aethiopien Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 5 410-424 http://www.sahoarchive.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/EWALD_Ueber-die-Saho-Sprache-in-Aethiopien..pdfHeinrich Ewald 1851 Geschichte des Volkes Israel bis Christus 1 Göttingen Dieterichsche Buchhandlung 2 https://archive.org/details/geschichtedesvol01ewal/page/n7/mode/2up Carl RitterCarl Ritter 1850 Die Erdkunde 19 volumes. Eugène Burnouf James Cowles Prichard Origin Fact check: The Aryans Friedrich Schlegel was the first modern thinker, in 1808, to propose an Aryan language family, and he understood its members—beyond purely linguistic affinities—as a cultural community, though not as a biological group defined by precise, hereditary physical traits. Christian Lassen went further than Schlegel by describing the Aryans as a specific historical people, a biological lineage with clearly defined physical characteristics. Gobineau, who read and absorbed both Schlegel and Lassen, advanced the concept far beyond either of them: he transformed it into a normative racial doctrine, identifying the "Aryans" with the "white race" and attributing to them not only inheritable physical features but also universal qualities such as intellect, strength, beauty, and creative power. For Gobineau, the Aryans functioned as a cosmic motor of history, with all great civilizations understood as the exclusive products of "Aryan blood." Among the first scholars to be concerned about the misconception that "the Aryans" were an ethnic or racial unit was Max Müller in the 1880s and 1890s. Today's scholarship speaks of "Aryans" exclusively in linguistic contexts, denoting speakers of Indo-Aryan languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family that includes, among others, Vedic Sanskrit, the Middle Indo-Aryan languages, and modern languages ​​such as Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, and Marathi. The idea that "the Indo-Aryans" were connected to each other by more than just their language and formed an ethnic or even biological unit is now considered obsolete. Read: Léon Poliakov (The Aryan Myth, 1974), David W. Anthony (The Horse, the Wheel, and Language, 2007) In the third book of his essay, Gobineau goes back to the white peoples, who according to him, had their "original home" in the plateaus of Central Asia. He discusses the exact geographical origin of the Aryans in detail in the last chapter of this book (see here). Originally probably triggered by an influx of yellow peoples, the white peoples living here, who were warlike, violent and not very well-disposed towards one another, began to move and to displace one another and finally embarked on great migrations.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 200 The Hamites and Semites had migrated southeastward (see Book 2). The Celts and Slavs migrated northwestward.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 184, 200 According to Gobineau, the most outstanding group within the white race is the "Aryans." He introduces them as "an illustrious human family, the indisputably noblest of white origins."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 181 Based on Iranian cosmogeny, he locates their exact origin in the area of ​​the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 186 Although the white race was originally uniform, Gobineau emphasizes that by the time the white migrations began, the Aryans had long since separated from other white peoples and no longer resembled them physically.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 184, 219 Characteristics, values, and way of life With Christian Lassen, Gobineau then raves about the Aryan race, "as far as its physical appearance is concerned," "the most beautiful one has ever heard of." He describes them as blond or red-haired, blue-eyed, and fair-skinned. Their heads were round with a broad forehead, their noses prominent, and their arms long.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 190f He lists ancient works of art in which, in his opinion, Aryans were depicted in their original beauty:Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 189f Also citing Lassen, Gobineau further writes that the Aryans were superior to all other tribes not only in physical beauty, but also in their intelligence, spirit, vitality, and energy. He also finds recognition for their form of government; the Aryans were sedentary and formed village-based tribes presided over by chiefs, whose very limited power Gobineau praises and distinguishes from the absolute power of the rulers among the black and yellow peoples.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 191f Gobineau assumes that the early Aryans were warriors rather than herders, and that their individual tribes, due to the warlike disposition of their men and their exceptionally high regard for warriorship, were often enemies and at war with one another.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 193-195 He points out that this peculiarity can be seen in Indian, Scandinavian, ancient Greek, and Persian mythology and poetry alike.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 195 Gobineau emphasizes that he is not surprised that inferior peoples, such as the Blacks of Assyria and Egypt, were always willing to worship white people like the Aryans as gods.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 195f Also following Lassen, Gobineau states that the Aryans, like all white peoples, were highly religious.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 196 In India, however, despite their high regard for metaphysical ideas and moral precepts, their cult was exceedingly simple.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 196f A small number of gods, headed by Indra, guided the world more than they ruled it.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 197 In order to be able to worship them willingly, the Aryans conceived these gods as even more beautiful than they already were, namely as "light natures" who were enlightening, promoting reason, and opposed to superstition.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 197f According to Gobineau, the reason why the Aryans were deeply religious is that Deus, as a rational principle, constituted their racial identity.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 199 Based on etymological reconstructions, he then shows that the same idea is also found in most of the gods of later Aryan-dominated peoples, with the exception of the Iranians.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 198f Early white migrations Gobineau distinguishes a number of individual groups among the Aryans, such as the Hellenes (Greeks), the Sarmatians, the Hindu peoples and the Zoroastrians (Iranians). The first three, which he only mentions here but does not discuss in detail, descended from their original homeland southwest, settled in Persia, and a smaller part moved as far as Asia Minor and Greece.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 188, 199-201 The Hindu peoples and Zoroastrians descended southward. Gobineau dates this to before 4000 BC.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 182 Their new home became the Indian subcontinent, particularly the Punjab, where they gave rise to the Brahmanic civilization. Unlike the Hamites, Gobineau goes on to write, the Aryans managed to preserve their original language and physical characteristics for many centuries. He concludes that the indigenous population—in his opinion, black—they encountered during their migration was either exterminated, was very small or fled from them.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 183 Gobineau's plea for the term "Aryan" Gobineau criticizes the scholars of his time who—in his opinion, inaccurately—prefer to speak of Indo-European languages ​​rather than granting a separate name to the only people who migrated to India with such a language. Since he is entirely focused on peoples, he prefers to keep language groups and people names separate.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 184 To encourage the use of this term to those scholars who prefer terms such as Japhetites, Caucasians and Indo-Europeans, he then delves deeply into the etymology of the word "Aryan," that he associates, along with Friedrich SchlegelFriedrich Schlegel 1808 Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Inder Heidelberg Mohr und Zimmer https://www.loc.gov/item/unk84026303/ Schlegel introduces the term exclusively in a linguistic context., with the German word "Ehre" (honor), among others, and explains that the people in question also chose it as a self-designation.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 185-188 Hindu-Indian civilization In his account of Hindu-Indian civilization, Gobineau presents India as an exemplar of a society that came remarkably close to achieving perfection through systematic racial preservation. According to his narrative, the Aryan conquerors of India faced the challenge of ruling over a numerically superior black native population. The Brahmin priests, recognizing the danger of racial mixing, devised what Gobineau considers an ingenious solution: the caste system (varna, meaning "color"), which institutionalized racial hierarchy by assigning social rank based on the proportion of white blood. Gobineau portrays this system as a brilliant attempt at racial hygiene. The highest castes—Brahmins (priests) and Kshatriyas (warriors and royalty)—were reserved for those with the most Aryan blood, while lower castes accommodated increasingly mixed populations, down to the Shudras and untouchables (Chandala). He emphasizes that the caste system's primary function was not religious or economic, but racial: to prevent interbreeding and preserve Aryan purity. However, Gobineau acknowledges that the system was imperfect and ultimately failed in its mission. Despite the caste structure, intermarriage between castes occurred. The mixing with black blood made Aryans more imaginative and artistic but softened their temperament. Gobineau praises the Brahmins' efforts to defend their system—through theological innovations (like the doctrine of reincarnation to attract outsiders), military conflicts with challengers (Zoroastrians, Pandavas), and eventually the defeat of Buddhism, which he portrays as a rebellion of lower, mixed-race classes against Aryan supremacy. Yet he concludes that despite these "wonderful" achievements creating "marvels in all fields," the civilization is now in "complete decline" because racial mixing proved impossible to completely prevent. Thus, India represents for Gobineau an almost perfect civilization—one that came closer than any other to achieving racial purity and thereby produced humanity's longest-lasting and most spiritually sublime culture—but which nevertheless demonstrates that even the most systematic attempts at racial preservation can only delay, not prevent, the inevitable degeneration through miscegenation. The caste system was humanity's most successful experiment in racial preservation, yet even it could not achieve perfection. this sectionGobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 185-266 Christian Lassen James Cowles PrichardJames Cowles Prichard 1843 Natural History of Man London H. Baillière https://archive.org/details/naturalhistorym00norrgoog Eugène BurnoufEugène (1833-1835) Burnouf Commentaire sur le Yaçna Imprimerie royale Paris Eugène Burnouf 1844 Introduction à l'histoire du buddhisme indien Imprimerie royale Paris https://archive.org/details/introductionlhi01burngoog Manusmriti The Vedas The Avesta The Mahabharata Victor Jacquemont1833 Correspondance de Victor Jacquemont avec sa famille et plusieurs de ses amis: pendant son voyage dans l'Inde, 1828-1832 Paris H. Fournier https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100732285 August Wilhelm SchlegelAugust Wilhelm Schlegel 1823 Indische Bibliothek 1 Wilhelm von HumboldtWilhelm von Humboldt 1838 Über die Kawi-Sprache auf der Insel Java F. Dümmler Berlin https://books.google.de/books?id=ifEUAAAAYAAJ 3 volumes. Franz Karl MoversFranz Klar Movers 1841 Die Phönizier 2 Bonn E. Weber https://archive.org/details/diephnizier00unkngoog Ersch und Grubers Encyclopädie Theodor BenfeyTheodor Benfey 1844 Ueber das Verhältniss der ägyptischen Sprache zum semitischen Sprachstamm Leipzig F. A. Brockhaus https://archive.org/details/ueberdasverhltni00benf Édouard de WarrenÉdouard de Warren 1844 L'Inde ainglaise en 1843 2 Bruxelles August Wilhelm SchlegelJames Cowles Prichard 1837 Darstellung der Aegyptischen Mythologie: Verbunden mit einer kritischen Untersuchung der Ueberbleibsel der Aegyptischen Chronologie Vorrede by A. W. Schlegel Bonn German translation of An Analysis of the Egyptian Mythology (1819). The Bible Julius von MohlJules Mohl 1851 Rapport annuel fait à la Société asiatique Paris Imprimerie royale The Indian Aryans establish a caste system to keep their blood pure Fact check: Indian caste system The Indian caste system emerged in the 2nd millennium BC, when Vedic society—with the transition from pastoralism to agriculture—became increasingly complex and required occupational specialization; individual population groups assumed different roles at that time. The Indian caste system owes its ideological superstructure to various sources, such as the Vedas. Although it is partly based on a Hindu concept of purity, this differs fundamentally from racial hygiene-based purity concepts developed in Europe in the 19th century. The Hindu concept of transmigration, in which parents and children are not necessarily spiritually related, pushed the importance of genetics even further into the background. As Nicholas Dirks (Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India, 2001) has shown, the impermeable Indian caste system as we have come to know it is, to a considerable extent, no longer the system that emerged from Vedic society, but a product of British colonialism. Before the emergence of the caste system, in Aryan Punjab, the community leaders (Viçpati), who were elected officials, had no special nimbus; priests had not even existed.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 202f For reasons not entirely clear to Gobineau, priests were then appointed. Under the hands of these purohitas, who also gained political influence and high prestige, the cult became very complicated.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 203f At the same time, they also began to handle worldly affairs. By anointing the Viçpati – Gobineau no longer speaks of "community leaders" here, but of "kings" –, they simultaneously elevated them and themselves.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 205 The priests proved themselves equal to their responsibility by being the first to recognize the necessity of ensuring that the Aryans did not mix with the numerically superior native Blacks.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 207 The mixing of blood "instilled dread in them."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 221 Gobineau writes that they then established and developed the caste system with "ingenuity," "unheard-of mental power," "sustained energy," "irresistible patience," in an extremely rational way, and in a conscious and planned manner. They divided the population into classes in which professions became hereditary, each of which would assume the tasks for which it was best suited.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 208, 216f Gobineau meaningfully emphasizes that the Indian term for castes, Varna, means "color." The highest castes were distinguished by the fact that their members had the largest proportion of white blood, while as blood purity decreased, so did the rank of the respective caste.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 209 The highest caste was made up of the priests themselves and their families (Brahmin); even the caste which included not only the warrior nobility but also the royal families (Kshatriya) followed only in second place.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 209f The kings had to submit not only to the advice of the priests and the warriors, but also to numerous religious statutes.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 212 The third caste (Vaishya), whose members were conceived as less white and less influential, but still at least partially Aryan and thus select, was made up of merchants, herders, and farmers; these were conceived as "the people," the "stock of the true nation"—in the original French text, Gobineau also refers to them as the "bourgeoisie"—whose rights were specially protected by numerous religious laws.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 213-215 Gobineau interprets the fact that members of this caste are considered "twice-born" not as a religious premise, but as a mere metaphor for their blood status.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 213 The fourth and lowest caste (Shudra), according to Gobineau, was intended for the natives who were either barely or not at all related to the ruling Aryans, but who revered them and were economically dependent on them.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 215 It included the artisans, laborers, peasants, and vagabonds, who were granted "the monopoly of all servile duties."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 216 Gobineau also refers to the Shudra as a "supplementary caste, which one could call the tolerated one."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 236 In addition, Gobineau also mentions the Vratya, a group of predominantly white people who were outlawed because they evaded the ceremonies (Samskara) required for the granting of caste privileges; they fell into crime and then formed "the basis of numerous tribes that were alienated from Indian nationality."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 217 Crossbreeding of Indian Aryans with black natives Gobineau's criticism of the Indian caste system, however, is that, in his opinion, the Brahman Hindus were by no means the most genuine Aryans, but, although their blood contained black elements, they merely exploited their superior position to their own advantage.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 218 Just as the Hamites and Semites in the Middle East did, he writes, the Aryans in India also interbred with the native black population.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 189, 219 Through the "admixture of black blood," they may have gained in imagination, but their temperament had also become soft, and their most valuable possession—their "calm strength"—had given way to passion; Gobineau even sees here a "flabbyness mixed with savagery" and an increasing "dissolution of society in India."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 219-221 Thus, all the experiences considered so far yield the same result: interbreeding with the black race, if it is light, develops the intelligence of the white race insofar as it gives it a turn toward imagination, makes it more artistic, and grants it more powerful wings. At the same time, however, it disarms their reason, diminishes the strength of their practical abilities, inflicts an irreparable blow to their energy and physical strength, and almost always deprives the group resulting from this union of the ability, not to shine far more brilliantly and think more deeply than the white race, but at least to compete with it in patience, firmness, and sagacity. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 220 In later chapters, Gobineau will also report on the yellow Peoples with whom the Aryans came into contact in India.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 262 Challenges to the Brahmanical social order In the second chapter of Book 3, Gobineau presents the development of Hinduism, Brahmanism, and the caste system in more detail, considering in particular the challenges that the caste system faced in its further development.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 228 Secession of the Zoroastrians He cites the "two strong pillars" on which the power of the Hindu priests had been based from the beginning as "the insightful religiosity of the Aryan race on the one hand" and "the less noble but fanatical devotion of the half-breeds and the subjugated natives" on the other. However, the religious innovations also encountered resistance within the Aryan population, particularly from the Zoroastrians, who had previously considered themselves part of the Aryan people but now separated themselves from them. Gobineau suspects that the reason the Zoroastrians rejected the caste system was that, as pure-blooded Aryans, they were too proud and freedom-loving to recognize a caste of less pure-blooded Brahmins to whom they had to submit.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 229 Since the Zoroastrians, as Aryans, were highly religious, they did not simply abandon all beliefs in this situation, but chose their own religion, Zoroastrianism, whose founder, Zoroaster, became also known as Zarathustra.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 229f Gobineau emphasizes that this belief had all the characteristics of a protest religion. He casually remarks that the separation of the two tribes was also linked to the demise of the "actual Aryan language", which was then replaced by Prakrit.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 230 Eventually, the Zoroastrians left the Punjab to move westward.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 201f, 229 War with the Pandavas The next major challenge for the Brahmins was the confrontation with the Pandavas, recounted in the Mahabharata epic. According to Gobineau, they were a white tribe pushing into India from the north, with various peoples from Kashmir as allies.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 231 Unlike the Hindu Aryans, who abhorred the consumption of cattle, the Pandavas ate all kinds of meat, showed no reverence for sacred animals, and recognized no castes. To the Hindus, they therefore appeared impure.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 232 A protracted war broke out between the two peoples, during which the Pandavas conquered the Punjab. Hindu civilization was pushed to the southeast, but after the Pandavas, lacking "all sacred barriers," interbred with black natives and thus "degenerated," the Hindu Aryans regained the upper hand and forcibly integrated them into the caste system. According to Gobineau, this subjugation to the (not pure-blooded) Hindu-Aryan Brahmins is the reason why in Kashmir, to which the Pandavas retreated, the priestly caste is today darker-skinned than the rest of the population.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 233 Invention of the idea of ​​reincarnation as a lure to people who were outside the caste system Fact check: Transmigration and reincarnation Transmigration (Saṃsāra) and reincarnation (Punarjanman) are not yet mentioned in the Vedas, the oldest texts of Indian Hinduism. They are first addressed in the Upanishads (c. 800 to 600 BC). Researchers have yet to reach a consensus on the factors that influenced this fundamental philosophical shift. A particular point of contention is whether—although not addressed in the Vedas—the dogma of transmigration was at least inspired by the Vedas, or whether other philosophical currents in India stimulated and shaped it. Read: Patrick Olivelle (The Early Upaniṣads, 1996), Johannes Bronkhorst (Greater Magadha, 2007) Gobineau names other white population groups who saw themselves "virtually excluded from Hindu nationality and reduced to a lower level of dignity and respect," including the Vratya mentioned above and certain white peoples living west of the Punjab and mentioned in the Rigveda.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 234-236 Also excluded and degraded were the black native tribes, whom Gobinau characterizes as "complete savages"; he lists several peoples by name, using imprecise designations, meaning possibly the Kadar, the Katkari, the Nuristanis, and the Kondh.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 236f Given the "immense number" of these people, the Brahmins felt the need to "attract them to Aryan civilization by some means." Since all earthly "goods of this world" had already been distributed, the Brahmins could only offer non-material goods to those previously excluded. Gobineau explains that as a solution to this problem, they invented the "dogma of transmigration," which now gave even the black natives a reason to recognize the caste system: it offered them, like everyone else, the prospect of ascending to a higher caste through the reincarnation of their soul.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 238 Conflicts between Brahmins and Kshatriya Conflicting interests also existed between the Brahmins and the caste of rulers and warriors (Kshatriya). For example, after making a military conquest, the warriors were not allowed to profit from their efforts and subjugate the defeated population.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 240 Only the Brahmins gained de facto control over new territories by penetrating them in large numbers as hermits and gradually winning the native peoples living there over to their cause.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 241 The warrior-princes would not accept that their prestige was being diminished by the Brahmins, who were so much superior to them in actual power.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 243f Later in the same chapter, Gobineau reports on the mythical Parashurama, whom he considers historical, and who is said to have founded a republic in Malabar in 1176 BCE. This was preceded by "a great conflict between the Kshatriyas and the sages" in northern India, during which the Brahmins annihilated all the warriors and then settled on the southern coast of India under Parashurama's leadership.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 253f Gobineau suggests that this is untrue and that the Brahmins moved to Malabar because they were actually defeated in the conflict. He believes that there were several such conflicts in which the Brahmins always lost.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 254 Consequences of racial mixing for the development of Hinduism Fragmentation of the caste system Fact check: Development and differentiation of the caste system During the Vedic period, only four castes (varnas) existed; these were described in the Rigveda as broad social categories and were relatively flexible and permeable. Buddhist and Jain sources from the late Vedic and early Buddhist periods describe, for the first time, craft guilds and occupational groups with hereditary professions; this marks the beginning of endogamous occupational groups (Jātis). The Jātis, of whom there are several thousand today, did not arise, as Gobineau claims, as a result of caste mixing, but rather due to economic development and an increase in professions, and to regionally varying conditions, among other things. Read: G. S. Ghurye (Caste and class in India, 1957), Louis Dumont (Homo Hierarchicus, 1966), Susan Bayly (Caste, society and politics in India, 1999) Gobineau then goes on to describe in detail marriages between members of the Brahmin and Kshatriya clans, which often led to complications in determining the status of children from such unions.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 242-248 Such unions, which he also calls "parasitic," took place not only between Brahmins and Kshatriyas, but between all four castes, leading to the creation of numerous additional castes and forming "such an inextricable web that nowadays the original castes in India can be regarded as almost suffocated under the immense offshoots they have produced and under the graft-ons which these supplementary offshoots in turn have incessantly caused." For Gobineau, this is a tragedy, firstly for the racial-hygienic functionality of the caste system, but secondly especially from the perspective of the "sad beings" born of mixed marriages, who bore "disgrace" and "defilement."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 248 Like the Manusmriti, Gobineau assumes that the Chandala, a group of untouchables, originated from a shameful caste mix between Shudra men and Brahmin women.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 249f He suggests that the emergence of the Chandala made important contributions to maintaining the functionality of the caste system even under the difficult conditions described.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 252 Emergence of the hideous As Gobineau had written earlier in this book, the original religion of the white race, in his estimation, had been as simple as it was ideal. Under the influence of the early Hindu priests (Purohitas), it had already become more complex, and in developed Hinduism, with increasing racial mixing, the complexity had grown even further, because more and more had to be taken into account the religious needs of the black and yellow races.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 254f While the Aryans had created gods for themselves who were beautiful and rational, the indigenous people demanded "images of gods that would be very ugly and terrible to look at."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 255f Thus, what Gobineau calls "depravity" and "hideous lewdness" had entered Hinduism.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 256 He explains this by saying that the black and yellow races could only comprehend ugliness.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 257 Expansion of the pantheon thumb|upright|The addition of Kubera to the Hindu pantheon was, according to Gobineau, a concession to black tastes. In the Vedic period, Indra had been the most important deity in Hinduism. Gobineau attributes the subsequent addition of further gods to the increasing need to cater to the worship needs and tastes of black people as racial mixing intensified. He is particularly interested, however, in Brahma, a new addition, because the Brahmins created yet another ideal deity in him. Consequently, Brahma was worshipped for a long time only by ascetics, while the "comprehension of the lower classes" was "too limited" to recognize his significance.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 259 Gobineau goes on to write that the Kshatriya then chose their own new chief deity, Vishnu, primarily for tactical reasons, namely to avoid the obligation of worshipping the god of the Brahmins. Subsequently, an arrangement was reached between the Brahmins and the Kshatriya: Brahma and Vishnu were recognized as equals (later Shiva was added), and the Kshatriya were granted the right to occupy the highest rank. However, in philosophical and religious terms, the influence and dominance of the Brahmins remained unbroken.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 260f Accomplishments of the Indian civilization Because their blood was not pure white at the time of their seizure of power, and their superiority was therefore already compromised, Gobineau predicts that the Brahmins would one day be subject to another, whiter people (meaning the British colonial rulers). Nevertheless, he continues, they still exhibit astonishing qualities to this day, such as—in the context of the entire population of India—"a degree of physical purity with which nothing can be compared." He praises their inclination to study, their reverence for scriptural monuments, their knowledge of their sacred language (Sanskrit), and their theological knowledge. The "hierarchical system devised by the Purohitas" has been "maintained in its entirety" to the present day. Gobineau devotes particular attention to the correct dating of the origin of the Indian civilization. He considers the dating of the Yugas, which here goes back to the year 3102 BC, to be probably exaggerated, so he prefers to use the dating of the Saptarshi era (also: Laukika era) used in Kashmir and Punjab, which, to his knowledge, refers to the year 2448 BC.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 222 Since he certainly does not consider the Indian civilization to be any younger, he can point out that it has in any case proven to be considerably more long-lasting than the Assyrian and Egyptian civilizations; he attributes this emphatically to the fact that the Brahmins preserved their white blood better than the rulers of the two aforementioned empires:Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 222f If three societies are given, they continue to exist to the extent that the white Primal Element, which forms the basis of all of them, asserts itself. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 224 Gobineau emphasizes that Indian civilization overshadows Assyrian and even Egyptian civilization, which he considers to be intermediate. In Brahmanic society, the "genius of humanity" has created "marvels in all fields that astonish the mind."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 226 The overall result of the Brahmins' creation was even more tremendous than the details of the work. From it emerged a society almost immortal, compared to the duration of all others. It had two dangers, and only two to fear: the attack of a nation more purely white than itself, and the difficulty of maintaining its laws against racial mixing. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 226 He also counts among the achievements of Indian civilization its maritime trade and the productivity of its agriculture, mining, and manufacturing, and furthermore, poetry, epic and theatrical art.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 262, 265-267 However, he sees its true merit in its efforts toward the spiritual: Herein lay the pinnacle of Brahmanical doctrine. With the introduction of the classes into which it divided humanity, it undertook to use each for the perfection of man, and to send him through the terrible pass, the entrance to which is the agony of death, either, if he had lived well, towards a higher destiny, or, conversely, towards a state whose lowliness allowed time for repentance. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 263f He finds it particularly commendable that their religion, through its promises, enables Hindus to devalue life. He believes that this gives them "a sublimity that is unparalleled."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 264 The most glorious period of human civilization is that in which life is not yet so highly valued that the need to preserve it is not prioritized over many other concerns that are more beneficial to individuals. What does this fortunate disposition depend on? We will always and everywhere find it corresponding to the greater or lesser degree of Aryan blood in the veins of a people. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 264f Development of Indian civilization after the emergence of Buddhism this sectionGobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 269ff Eugène Burnouf Christian Lassen Buddhism attempts to challenge the caste system Fact check: Buddhism Buddhism is a religious and philosophical tradition founded in India by Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha, ca. 563–483 BCE). It teaches that suffering arises from desire and can be overcome through the Noble Eightfold Path (right understanding, right action, right meditation), leading to Nirvana — the extinguishing of suffering, not annihilation. Gobineau interprets Buddhism as an uprising of the lower, supposedly "racially mixed" castes against the Aryan Brahmins. For him, the Buddha embodies merely an egalitarian revolt aimed at undermining the caste system and therefore reduced to moral teaching, compassion, and a supposedly nihilistic "Nirvana." From this reading, Gobineau constructs an ideological argument: Buddhism must fail because equality cannot endure against a "racial order." He ignores historical reality entirely. The Buddha criticized ritual authority, not racial hierarchy; his followers were by no means predominantly from lower castes, and Nirvana signifies the cessation of suffering, not "nothingness." Equally false is his claim that Buddhism was displaced only by the Brahmins—political upheavals and Muslim invasions led to its decline in India, while the tradition was already flourishing across Asia. Buddhism is a highly complex philosophical tradition, not the degenerate moral system Gobineau imagined. Read: Richard Gombrich (Theravåda Buddhism, 1988; What the Buddha Thought, 2009), Michael Carrithers (The Buddha: A Very Short Introduction, 2001) Fact check: Nirvana Gobineau was not the only Western scholar to misunderstand the Buddhist concept of Nirvana and equate it with "nothingness." A similar misunderstanding of the term can be found not only in Burnouf, who serves as Gobineau's source, but also in Hegel and Schopenhauer, and later in Nietzsche. Nirvana is the core soteriological goal of Buddhism and holds a position in this religion roughly comparable to that of salvation in Christianity. However, the distinction between these two touches upon fundamental differences between these two religious traditions—differences Gobineau failed to grasp. Nirvana is not nothingness but the cessation of suffering and liberation from the cycle of rebirth (Saṃsāra). It is described negatively (the end of craving, ignorance, and attachment) not because it is nothing, but because it transcends ordinary conceptual categories. Read: Evgeny Torchinov (Religions of the World, 2001), Steven Collins (Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities, 1998) In the 7th century BCE, ideas of Samkhya philosophy, an important current of Hindu philosophy, spread through Indian scholarship—ideas which Gobineau described as "very dangerous" and "subversive." Gobineau presents these ideas as meaning that the tenets of the Vedas and Brahmanism were declared irrelevant, and that to "reach the higher levels of life," one only needed to practice arbitrary asceticism.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 269f Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) took up these ideas and expanded them, stating that it was neither necessary to read liturgical texts, nor to undergo "mortifications and tortures," nor to respect the caste system; according to his teachings, to "free oneself from the shackles of present existence," one only needed to observe the moral laws and think of others rather than oneself.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 270 Gobineau sees Siddhartha's greatest break with Brahmanism in the fact that he promised people – instead of just union with Brahma – "Nirvana, i.e., complete, eternal nothingness".Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 270f After beginning to teach as a begging itinerant preacher, he found numerous disciples, especially among the lower classes.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 271 As an example of how little regard the teacher and his followers had for the caste system, Gobineau recounts the story of his first and most devoted disciple, Ānanda, who, although himself a Kshatriya, married a Chandala girl.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 272 Failure and retreat of Buddhism Gobineau emphasizes that Brahmanism, which possessed "extraordinary vitality," was quite resistant to Buddhist reform efforts, so that these were, on the whole, not very successful. If Buddhism gained followers not only from the lowest classes but also from members of higher castes, these were their most inferior representatives.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 274 Although some Buddhists were able to gain high prestige within their own "sect," this reform movement "did not seriously disrupt" Indian society as a whole.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 273 Gobineau bases this, among other things, on the fact that even 200 years after the death of Buddha, although a Buddhist king, Ashoka, reigned, the dominance of the Brahmins remained unbroken.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 273f Even as late as the 5th century CE, Brahmanism and Buddhism existed "shoulder to shoulder." The "time to act" came for the Brahmins when, during the 5th century CE, more and more Buddhist monasteries (vihāras) were established, attracting increasing numbers of believers through their sophisticated and lavish artistic design and decoration.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 275f The Brahmins began a war against the Buddhists that would last until the 14th century.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 276 Gobineau argues that the defeat of Buddhism was deserved, because "it shrank from its consequences," for example, by "discrediting its claims to moral perfection by recruiting from all its lost subjects," but also by ultimately recognizing the castes it had failed to destroy in its first attempt. He then goes on to report that in the 11th century, Buddhism completely withdrew from India and "fled" to Ceylon, Java, Nepal, Tibet, China, Vietnam, and Central Asia.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 277 There it developed as it pleased, and contrary to the opinion of some superficial judges, we must admit that an examination does not turn out favorably for it and clearly demonstrates how unproductive for people and societies a political and religious doctrine is which insists on being based solely on morality and reason. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 277 The main philosophical criticism Gobineau levels against Buddhism is that its ontology is based on its moral law; in a "true philosophy," it is always the other way around. He traces all the other problems he sees in Buddhism back to this fundamental problem: its "nonsense," the "soullessness" and "artificiality" of its doctrine, and even the "absurdities of the prayer wheel."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 277f Superiority of Brahmanism over Buddhism thumb|upright|Gobineau considers the fact that Buddha is interpreted as an avatar of Vishnu in late Hinduism to be a conscious and deliberate move by "the Brahmins" who wanted to win over Buddhists to their own religion. According to Gobineau, Brahmanism's triumph over Buddhism was due to its "tact," its ability to forgive and make concessions, and its refusal to humiliate Buddhists who returned to Brahmanism.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 278 He accommodated them by declaring Buddha an incarnation of Vishnu and, moreover, by including many "Buddhist deities" in his pantheon, though they were only permitted to occupy low ranks.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 278f In India, Brahmanism represented the justified predominance of the, albeit highly degenerate, white element, while the Buddhists attempted a rebellion of the lower classes. This rebellion could not succeed as long as the Aryan type, despite its flaws, retained the greater part of its characteristic virtues due to its isolation. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 281 India in the second millenium and in modern times Gobineau reports that, beginning with the Persian army of the white, but crude and fanatical Muslim Mahmud of Ghazni, from 1001 onward foreign peoples invaded India and ravaged the land, its temples, its books, its priests, and its warriors "with fire and sword." However, he emphasizes that there is no better example in history than India of a "fortunate and protracted resistance" to such oppression. The Indians even retained the strength to continue pushing back Buddhism.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 281 The Persians were followed by Turks, Mongols, Afghans, Tatars, Arabs, Abyssinians, Persians again, then Portuguese, English, and French.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 281f As a result, parts of the territory became Muslim; "the incursion of semi-Arian blood into Punjab has produced Nanak's religion of equality." But Brahmanism never ceased to fight and to perfect itself. Gobineau finds it particularly impressive that India successfully resisted the appropriation of Western civilization even during the hundred-year colonial period at that time.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 282 And yet Brahmanism is in complete decline; its great men have vanished; the tasteless or savage superstitions, the theological absurdities of that part of its cult put forward by the black race have, in a frightening way, gained the upper hand over that which was so sublime, so noble and profound, which its former wisdom possessed. The Negro type and the yellow element have carved their way into its core peoples, and in some places it is difficult to distinguish the Brahmins from certain individuals belonging to the lower castes. In any case, the corrupt nature of this degenerate race will not be able to prevail against the superior strength of the white peoples who came from Western Europe. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 283 Gobineau's racial assessment of India At the end of the section on India, Gobineau draws a comparison between Hindu civilization and that of ancient Egypt. He had attributed to both the fact that they originated and flourished under an Aryan ruling class. According to Gobineau, however, in Egypt the mixing with black blood had begun at an earlier stage in the development of this civilization than in India, while in India the Aryan influence remained dominant for longer.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 284f The “extraordinary longevity” of Hindu civilization, which he attributes to the consistently high Aryan presence, is a point he repeatedly returns to in the text. He sees another difference between the two cultures in that such mixing with yellow blood too occurred only in India, although the greater part of the damage was caused by the invading black blood.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 285f We must regard the Aryan race as the noblest, the most intelligent, the most powerful of the white race. In Egypt, where we first observed it, and in the Hindu lands, where we have just observed it, we have found a high aptitude for worldly wisdom, a significant sense of morality, gentleness in its institutions, and vigor in maintaining them; in short, a pronounced superiority over the native inhabitants of both the Nile Valley and the banks of the Ganges, the Indus, and the Brahmaputra. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 284 In the same chapter, Gobineau also makes statements about contemporary racial geography in India. Since he assumes that the Aryans came from north of the Himalayas and that new arrivals continued to come from there, he is convinced that the Aryan race has been preserved in its purest form in the west, northwest and north: among the Sindhis, the Rohilla, the mountain dwellers of the Hindu Kush (meaning probably the Nuristanis), the Sikhs, the Rajputs and the Gurkha of Nepal, followed by the Marathi and the Burmese. He believes that these people are most likely to throw off English rule, and the Muslims least likely, because they were "too closely tied to the lowest types of the population."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 283, 286 Gobineau describes southern India as a region of immense forests, populated to his own time by "tribes of wild Blacks" where "dialects derived from Sanskrit" are hardly spoken. This part of the country is further characterized by an extreme diversity of languages, skin colors, and physical appearances, even among the upper castes. Gobineau attributes this heterogeneity to the fact that "mixing with the natives has progressed furthest here." His judgment of this population is disparaging; he describes them as "weak masses, without strength, without courage, filled with a baser superstition than is found anywhere else," and, in their subservience, utterly incapable of any aspirations for independence. In his estimation, Aryan blood has barely penetrated this far.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 287 Gobineau, however, sees potential for future racial and consequently also civilizational development in southern India in the fact that this region has a particularly high number of "mixed-race" people, who are the offspring of European fathers and native mothers.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 287f This class, which is increasing every day, possesses such special qualities, such a lively intelligence, that the attention of scholars and statesmen has already turned to them with great enthusiasm, and their existence has been seen as the cause of future revolutions in India. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 288 He particularly values ​​such "mixed-race" children if the father is English, because in his opinion this nation "has preserved the greatest kinship with the Aryan character in Europe."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 288 Although he does not believe this population group is capable of rebelling against British colonial rule, he considers them to be the ones who would lead a liberated South India.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 288f Gobineau sees the mixing of blood with the black race as the greatest threat to all parts of India, and the preservation of the Brahmanical caste system as the best way to prevent it.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 289 His overall assessment of Hindu civilization is that it is a "wonderful colossus of spirit, power, and beauty," which he strongly recommends to the scholars of his time so that they may learn about a truly superior culture that can serve as a model for their own deficient one.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 289-291 Chinese civilization In his section on China, Gobineau presents a civilization that serves as a deliberate counterpoint to his portrayal of India. While India represented humanity's most successful attempt at racial preservation through the caste system—an "almost perfect" civilization—China exemplifies what happens when no such systematic effort is made to maintain racial purity. According to Gobineau, both civilizations were founded by Aryan conquerors, but their trajectories diverged fundamentally. In India, the Brahmins established the caste system to prevent racial mixing, enabling the civilization to endure for millennia with its Aryan character relatively intact. In China, by contrast, the rebellious Kshatriya founders deliberately rejected the caste system and implemented "absolute equality." Without barriers to interbreeding, the Aryan element was progressively diluted by mixing with the indigenous Malay population and incoming yellow tribes until "not even half-white groups remained." Gobineau portrays the resulting Chinese civilization as materialistic, stagnant, and spiritually empty—the natural outcome of racial mixing without protective institutions. He characterizes it as focused on "material gain" and lacking imagination, philosophical depth, genuine art, or any sense of the sublime. While acknowledging China's administrative efficiency, he compares it to socialist systems that sacrifice higher human values for material security. He argues that China's racial homogenization has made it immune to transformation by similarly yellow conquerors like the Mongols and Manchu, who merely perpetuate the existing system. Only a hypothetical white conquest could transform China, and even then only through generations of interbreeding. The juxtaposition makes Gobineau's point unmistakable: where India demonstrates that systematic racial preservation can sustain a great civilization for millennia despite imperfections, China proves that equality and racial mixing lead inexorably to mediocrity and stagnation. For Gobineau, racial hierarchy and separation are prerequisites for civilizational greatness, while equality and mixing guarantee degeneration. Gobineau's characterization and assessment of the yellow race the sections about the yellow raceGobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 293ff Charles PickeringCharles Pickering 1848 The Races of Man and Their Geographical Distribution Little & Brown Boston https://archive.org/details/60340600R.nlm.nih.gov Carl RitterCarl Ritter 1850 Die Erdkunde 19 volumes. Christian LassenChristian lassen 1839 Beiträge zur Kunde des indischen Alterthums aus dem Mahâbhârata Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 2 21-70 Julius von Mohl At the beginning of this part of his book, Gobineau recounts how the Aryans, who were advancing ever further east in India beyond Bengal, increasingly encountered members of the yellow race.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 292 He introduces them as both heterogeneous and "peculiar".Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 292f Gobineau describes the physical characteristics of the yellow race as their small, occasionally even dwarfish, stature, weak limbs, and stocky, compact body shapes "without beauty or grace, with something peculiar and often repulsive." He characterizes their faces as incompletely formed, with small eyes in broad, smooth facial surfaces. Hair is sometimes sparse, but in some groups, on the contrary, the head hair is "extraordinarily abundant"; it is always "black, stiff, straight, and coarse like horsehair."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 293 The mental characteristics of the yellow race he labels as decidedly "masculine": An absolute lack of imagination, a unique tendency to satisfy natural needs, much tenacity and persistence applied to down-to-earth or ridiculous ideas, some instinct for individual liberty, manifested, in the greater number of tribes, by attachment to nomadic life, and, among the most civilized peoples, by respect for domestic life; little or no activity, no intellectual curiosity, none of those passionate tastes for adornment, so remarkable among negroes: these are the principal traits that all branches of the Mongol family possess in common, to varying degrees. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 294 He lists further typical characteristics as deeply ingrained pride, mediocrity, a tendency towards the "lowly practical," a lack of motivation for pursuits beyond the purely material, a "firmness of viewpoints" based on a lack of imagination, disinterest in and contempt for everything that "takes place outside their immediate circle," and self-satisfaction.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 294f He views the sophistication he observes among Asians in the areas of food, clothing, and housing, and their high level of craftsmanship, not as a cultural achievement but as a deficiency resulting from their excessive preoccupation with trivial matters instead of higher ones.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 295 Furthermore, he also attributes to the yellow Race a "natural predisposition for superficial sociability." Although he rates the yellow race higher overall than the black race, he believes their intelligence is equally low.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 301 However, he also believes that certain black-yellow mixed races, such as the Malays, are physically and mentally superior to both black and yellow peoples: It would seem that the defects of the two races have been balanced and moderated in the common product, and that, with more imagination raising the mind, while a less false feeling of reality restricted the imagination, there has resulted a greater aptitude for comparing, grasping, and concluding. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 301 However, Gobineau immediately qualifies this by pointing out the significant deficiencies that such mixed-breeds exhibit due to their ancestry.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 302 Origin and distribution of the yellow race Gobineau identifies the original settlement area of ​​the yellow Race—based both on their physiognomy and on linguistic considerations—as "the great continent of America." From there, they spread to Siberia even before the so-called prehistoric era. Gobineau considers it revealing that the yellow race proudly claims to be descended from apes; however, he provides no source for this cosmogony.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 296 Up until early historical times, he goes on to explain, the distribution area of ​​the yellow race was very extensive: The entire empire of China, Siberia, all of Europe, perhaps with the exception of its southernmost ends - these are the vast territories in whose possession the yellow group presents itself to us as soon as white wanderers set foot in the regions west, north and east of the icy plateaus of Central Asia. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 293 It is only at the very end of the third book that Gobineau offers a comprehensive treatment of the origin of the yellow race, which he also refers to in many places as the "Finnish" race. From its geographical distribution in Asia, where it appeared in such great numbers that collisions occurred between it and the Aryans originally settled there, he concludes that it must have come from the east, where its original homeland must have been "on the American continent" (sur le continent américain). Its migrations then led it—while bypassing Siberia, which continued to be inhabited by Aryans—partly along the Arctic Ocean to Europe, and partly to East Asia.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 380f He rules out northeastern Siberia, even though the yellow peoples must in his view have passed through it, as a homeland, because that barren region could not possibly have provided a subsistence basis for such large populations.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 381 Impending mixing of white peoples with yellow and black peoples in Asia Around the year 5000 BC, Gobineau writes, the "savages" of the yellow Race so harassed the Whites in their Central Asian homeland and in their northern neighboring settlement areas that the latter began to abandon these territories and leave them to the invaders, who, although physically and mentally inferior, must have far outnumbered them.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 276f According to Gobineau, Asia was inhabited not only by yellow peoples, but also by black peoples. He identifies the entire area south of "the Kunlun" and Formosa as their settlement areas, and also Japan and Oceania.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 298 To illustrate how great the danger posed to whites in Asia by possible racial mixing, he also cites a number of mixed black and yellow peoples, such as the Zardandan mentioned by Marco Polo and the inhabitants of Fujian, Southeast Asia, and Polynesia.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 299f Gobineau explains the fact that the whites were so successful in resisting interbreeding with these foreign races by, among other things, being "very fertile" and forming large populations.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 300 Questioning Chinese antiquity the section on the early history of ChinaGobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 304ff Antoine GaubilAntoine Gaubil 1814 Traité de la chronologie chinoise Paris Silvestre de Sacy 10.1017/CBO9781139505857 https://archive.org/details/b22007088/page/n1/mode/2up Christian Lassen Carl Ritter Édouard BiotÉdouard Biot 1851 Le Tcheou-li, ou Rites des Tcheou. Traduit pour la première fois du chinois Paris Imprimerie nationale https://ia800607.us.archive.org/22/items/letcheouliourit01legoog/letcheouliourit01legoog_text.pdf Karl Friedrich NeumannKarl Friedrich Neumann 1847 Die Sinologen und ihre Werke Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 1 1-14 43361327 Julius von Mohl Alexander von HumboldtAlexander von Humboldt 1843 Asie centrale, recherches sur les chaînes des montagnes et la climotologie comparée 1 Paris Gide https://www.google.com/books/edition/Asie_centrale/SsRCAAAAYAAJ August Wilhelm Schlegel Alexander BurnesAlexander Burnes 1834 Travels into Bokhara John Murray London https://archive.org/details/travelsintobokha0000burn 3 volumes. John Francis DavisJohn Francis Davis 1836 The Chinese. A General Description of the Empire of China and Its Inhabitants Harper & Brothers New York https://ia601603.us.archive.org/9/items/chinesegeneral01davi/chinesegeneral01davi.pdf 2 volumes. thumb|upright|left|Construction of the Great Wall began in the 7th century BC. Gobineau does not mention this structure in his essay. Fact check: Origins of China Gobineau is correct in stating that Chinese civilization arose later than Assyrian, Egyptian, and Indian civilizations, insofar as there is indeed no Chinese ruling dynasty before the Shang Dynasty (c. 1570–1066 BCE) whose existence is archaeologically proven. However, numerous more complex Neolithic cultures with corded ware pottery have been documented in China even 10,000 years ago; the cultivation of millet demonstrably began 8,000 years ago, and that of rice 7,000 years ago. One very early Chinese culture that is particularly well documented today is the Yangshao culture (5000–3000 BCE), which was discovered by Johan Gunnar Andersson in 1923. Read: Michael Loewe, Edward L. Shaughnessy (eds; The Cambridge History of Ancient China, 1999), Li Feng (Early China, 2013), John S. Major, Constance A. Cook (Ancient China, 2016) Without naming his opponents, Gobineau contradicts the view—possibly popular in his time—that Chinese civilization is the oldest in the world. He believes that it arose later than Assyrian, Egyptian, and Indian civilizations.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 305 He refers to Christian Lassen, according to whom, although there are isolated accounts of events dating back to 2205 BCE, reliable Chinese historiography did not begin before 782 BCE.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 306 Gobineau considers sources that point to an earlier origin of Chinese civilization—such as certain Taoist scriptures, which he does not specify—to be unreliable. He also rejects as untenable his opponents’ claim that the sole reason China’s great age cannot be proven is the loss of crucial sources in the book burning of 213 BCE, since, according to him, book burnings have occurred in all great civilizations without this actually destroying the entire historical record. Furthermore, Gobineau finds a lack of monuments and antiquities in China: "the oldest do not date beyond the eighth century CE." Chinese civilization as an Aryan foundation Gobineau recounts that, according to its own legend, China was originally populated by the Miao. These yellow "barbarians," who lived in burrows and caves and subsisted on raw meat, grass, and wild fruits, claimed, as he and Carl Ritter suggest, to be descended from apes.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 307f According to legend, the first "human" to arrive in this environment was Pangu, who then "began to regulate the relations of mankind."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 308 Gobineau interprets this Pangu, who was either the real leader of an immigrant tribe or its allegorical representative, as a white man, indeed even an Aryan, arguing that the Hindu Manusmriti recounts how tribes of rebellious Kshatriyas migrated to southern China, spread there, and civilized the local peoples. Unlike the writings of the Taoists, he considers the Manusmriti highly reliable because it was written by Brahmins, who would have had no reason to falsely boast of conquests made by apostates among their own members. According to Gobineau, Pangu's burial place in the southern province of Henan, the fact that he is depicted as a foreigner even in Chinese tradition, and the strong Indo-Chinese relations also indicate that he was a white man.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 308-311 Thus, in China, as in Egypt, at the other end of the Asian world, as in all the regions we have already traveled through so far, here is a white tribe charged by Providence with inventing a civilization. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 311 As further proof that the founders of China were white, Gobineau cites the continued existence of white people in certain valleys of the Himalayas, which he does not correctly specify.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 311f As further examples of Chinese peoples with white characteristics described in historical texts, he mentions the Yuezhi, the Wusun, the Dingling, the Yenisei Kyrgyz, the Yancai, and the inhabitants of Kashgar.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 312f Gobineau emphasizes that the white peoples in China—just as in the Middle East—mingled and interbred with the non-white indigenous populations.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 313f Governing principles Fact check: Confucianism Gobineau mentions Confucius only in two passages and dismisses his teachings as a "puerile" moral philosophy, but has obviously not studied it in depth. Confucianism, along with Buddhism and Daoism, is one of the "Three Teachings" of Chinese philosophy. Its founder is considered to be Confucius (probably 551-479 BCE), but much of its teachings are derived from the Five Classics, the earliest parts of which originated during the Western Zhou (11th-8th centuries BCE). At the heart of Confucianism lies the doctrine that through education, self-cultivation, and the conscientious fulfillment of one's duties in the five fundamental social relationships (e.g., father-son), a person achieves moral perfection, thereby attaining both personal virtue and social harmony. Confucianism forms the intellectual foundation of imperial Chinese civilization and shaped its political and administrative organization as well as its social order, ethics, and education. Read: Herbert Fingarette (Confucius: The Secular as Sacred, 1972) Gobineau explains the stark difference between the Chinese and Indian systems of government by suggesting that the ruling Kshatriyas in China were apostates who felt "disgust for the Brahmanical hierarchy" and considered it essential to deviate as much as possible from Hindu doctrine. Therefore, they refrained from establishing a caste system and instead implemented "absolute equality." [315f] To illustrate the bizarre nature of a philosophy born solely from hatred of the Brahmanical order, Gobineau also recounts how these rulers conceived "the peculiar idea" of ennobling fathers when their children had distinguished themselves—a grotesque reversal of white principles, in his view.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 316-318 Gobineau further reports that China's system of government was modeled on the rule of the family patriarch. Just as the father rules over his children, so too does the prince rule over his subjects.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 318 This principle, he notes, is also fundamentally shared by the Aryan race, but it had a particular form in China. While the patriarchal idea in Aryan societies was merely a theoretical principle that reached its limits when the specific needs of the individual were affected, in China the authority of the father and the prince was absolute.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 319f He then points out that the Chinese people, because they were "Malay"—that is, they had both black and yellow blood—had a different "nature" and therefore required a different kind of rule than predominantly black peoples, such as those he had discussed in his book on the Middle East.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 321f The latter were characterized above all by stupidity; ruling them required violent and brutal despotism. Regarding the "Malay race," on the other hand, he writes that although its members completely lacked imagination, they were quite capable of "grasping the advantages of a proper and orderly constitution"; consequently, they submitted easily and willingly to the law.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 322 While the Blacks admired their oppressors, the Chinese, if the monarch exercised it excessively, could lose respect for authority. Gobineau explains this firstly by saying that the Chinese were "highly prosaic minds" who abhorred any deviation from the middle ground, and secondly by saying that they were wisely ruled by Aryans.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 323 As an example of how powerless Chinese rulers could sometimes be, Gobineau cites the case of King You of Zhou, who in the 8th century BC attempted to appoint an illegitimate son as his successor instead of his firstborn, but failed due to public opinion and custom.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 324-326 In short, the Son of Heaven can do anything, provided that he wants nothing but what is already known and approved. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 327 Philosophy, art, and literature thumb|Gobineau writes that Chinese art is not worth mentioning. Ink wash painting by Xu Wei (1521–1593) Gobineau assesses Chinese civilization as having been "irresistibly driven toward material gain."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 327 Its "material organization" was more highly developed and stable than anywhere else.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 329f China was geared toward maintaining "deepest tranquility" at all costs, avoiding any public agitation or disruption of order.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 327f The people were to be "buried in material happiness," according to their own wishes. Consequently, "philosophical theories" and "religious opinions," which elsewhere become "flames," have always remained ineffective in this country, given the "national indolence well-fed with rice."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 328 Given this, Gobineau denies the Chinese any sense of something higher: However, it must also be admitted that it is a spectacle devoid of beauty and dignity. If this yellow crowd is peaceful and submissive, it is on the condition that it remains, forever, deprived of feelings foreign to the humblest notion of physical utility. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 330 Philosophy, ethics, and religion are nothing more than instructions for proper conduct and ceremony, taught in a "childishly obscure and dryly didactic manner" and must be rigidly followed.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 330, 333 The majority of Chinese are knowledgeable in law and can read and write; however, even in the Imperial examination, only what is useful is learned.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 330-332 Literature is considered important in China; in reality, however, it too is only "a powerful agent of stagnation."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 330f Gobineau finds praise here only for the genre of the novel, because the Chinese, although lacking imagination, nevertheless demonstrate "a great deal of observation and subtlety."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 332f He also speaks approvingly of the "thick scientific works," but immediately criticizes the fact that "these verbose collections" lack criticism:Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 333 The spirit of the yellow race is neither deep enough nor sagacious enough to grasp this quality reserved for the white species. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 333 He finds a lack of "general theories" in scientific works. Science is only valued in China if it is applicable.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 334 As for what is great, sublime, and fruitful, on the one hand they cannot attain it, on the other hand they fear it and carefully exclude it. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, pp. 334f Gobineau thinks even less of Chinese art, in which he at best acknowledges the "delicacy of the brush" and the skill in portraiture, but denies it spirit, power, taste, and any depth.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 335 In architecture, he says the Chinese are either epigones (he describes their pagodas as copied from the Indians) or limit themselves entirely to the construction of purely utilitarian structures, such as canals, dikes, and dams.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 336 Gobineau's assessment of Chinese civilization Gobineau finds it remarkable that the Chinese—because, in his estimation, they are stubbornly materialistic and averse to excesses of any kind—are able to cultivate two social institutions without ever experiencing their abuse, “which seem hardly compatible with any regular government”: freedom of assembly and freedom of the press.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 336f He lists the following among the achievements of Chinese civilization, especially its administration: Popular education propagated everywhere, well-being of subjects, complete freedom within the permitted sphere, the most complete industrial and agricultural developments, production at the most mediocre prices, which would make any European competition difficult with ordinary consumer goods, such as cotton, silk, pottery. Such are the undeniable results of which the Chinese system can boast. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 338 Gobineau, however, sees parallels between Chinese civilization and the socialist schools of his own time (Charles Fourier, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon), which for him consist in the fact that in both systems despotism is accepted in order to guarantee individuals basic material needs – food, housing, and education.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 338f He argues that even seemingly democratic elements, such as the civil service system based on examinations and the imperial system based on merit rather than heredity, do not refute this.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 339f For in China, as in socialism, only those who maintain the established order would be recognized as meritorious, which for him amounts not only to despotism but also to the deification and worship of power. He criticizes the fact that in both systems – the socialist and the Chinese – far too much more important things are sacrificed for lower material achievements: science, poetry, the arts, “every sense of human dignity”.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 340 Decline of the Aryans in China Fact check: Feudalism Gobineau contends explicitly that the Aryans, out of a sense of pride, favored decentralized forms of government. In doing so, he disregards what contemporary scholarship had long recognized: particularism arises not from political strength but from weakness. The deeper reason he ascribes an affinity for feudal institutions to the Aryans—and elevates this to a mark of superiority—may well be that he sought, through this book, to provide an apologetic for the nobility, which could flourish only within a system of particularism. Feudalism is a political and social system in which a ruler grants land and sovereign rights to vassals who, in return, owe him military service and loyalty. These vassals, in turn, can grant fiefs to sub-vassals, creating a hierarchy of personal dependencies in which political power is decentralized and tied to land ownership. In China, the first scattered feudal structures can be traced back to the Shang dynasty (16th-11th centuries BC), while classical feudalism—well documented—exists from the Western Zhou (1046-771 BC; Fengjian). Read: Hsu Cho-yun, Katheryn M. Linduff (Western Chou Civilization, 1988) Gobineau writes that after the Aryans arrived in the southern provinces of China, they civilized the local Malay population and introduced "patriarchal government."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 341f He describes a characteristic of white governance that he finds not only in the earliest China but also in other civilizations under white control: a "dispersion of power," a "fragmentary organization of power and its division into a great number by the common bond of a supreme authority of more or less connected lordships."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 342f In China, too, the Aryans did not want to "leave the pleasures of commanding in the hands of a single individual from their own ranks," so that rule over the country fragmented into a multitude of territorial states, only loosely held together by the emperor.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 343 While the white race was the originator of Chinese civilization, it subsequently "never sufficiently renewed itself to deter vast numbers of people from their natural instincts." The population—originally "Malay," i.e., yellow-black—received an increasing influx of the yellow race, with the result that the "white element" became increasingly diluted. The yellow newcomers willingly the existing civilization.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 341 Gobineau writes that in the transitional phase, when the yellow tribes had only just begun their spread in China and had not yet "neutralized" the Malays, there were isolated instances of the transitional phenomenon of "barbaric customs". As examples, he cites, firstly, the custom widespread in northern China of burying not only the prince himself after his death, but also his wives and warriors who were still alive (Gobineau traces this custom back to a Finnish tradition); secondly, he refers to the practice whereby the emperor would send a sword to a mandarin who had fallen out of favor, so that he might take his own life.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 345 According to Gobineau, white dominance in China lasted until the accession of the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang (which he incorrectly dates to 246 BC).Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 343 By this time, interbreeding between white, Malay, and yellow tribes had advanced to such a degree that not even half-white groups remained. Qin Shi Huang's "revolution" destroyed "the last visible trace of the white race" in China; stagnation spread. Gobineau notes that it was only at this time that Confucianism emerged.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 344, 346 There was, moreover, only this further novelty—significant in itself—that the last trace of independence and personal dignity, understood in the Aryan manner, had vanished forever before the definitive encroachments of the yellow race. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 344f Can China be transformed through foreign rule? Past: Mongol conquest of China Fact check: Mongol conquest of China The Mongolian invasion of China comprised: the Western Xia (subjugated and made vassals 1209-1227), the Jin Dynasty in northern China (subjugated ca. 1215 to 1368), and the Song Dynasty in southern China (1279-1368). By 1279, all of China was subjugated and Kublai Khan proclaimed the Yuan Dynasty. Gobineau's portrayal of the is largely inaccurate. The Mongols neither "admired" Chinese culture nor submitted to the Chinese system nor left this system unchanged. While the Mongols did respect Chinese knowledge and adopted parts of the existing administration, this had purely pragmatic reasons. During the Yuan period, they established a caste system, the "Four Class System," which was intended to ensure the political supremacy of the Mongolian minority. Many key positions were filled with Mongols or Semu ("colored foreigners"). For a variety of different reasons, the Mongols were unable to maintain their presence in China and finally withdrew in 1368. Read: Morris Rossabi (Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times, 1988), Herbert Franke, Denis Twitchett (eds, The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 6, 1994) Following his account of the downfall of the Aryans in China, Gobineau relates the story of the Mongolian conquest and occupation of the country in the 13th century. His primary aim here was to illustrate how China, as long as the conquerors belong to the same race as the inhabitants, would always remain politically, socially, culturally, and intellectually unchanged, even under the conditions of foreign rule. Gobineau takes care to establish here that the invaders led by Genghis Khan, instead of transforming China according to their own standards, "adapted themselves to the ideas of the country" and submitted to the direction of the mandarins. As an explanation for this, and for the brief duration of Mongolian rule over China, Gobineau offers the argument that "the Mongolian, Tartar, and other tribes" which formed the armies of Genghis Khan "belonged almost entirely to the yellow race." The superiority they required to unite for a campaign and conquer enemy lands, he explains, is due to their having absorbed blood from white tribes ("Haka") "in rather distant antiquity"; they had, so to speak, become "intoxicated" by "the accidental contribution of some admixture of Whites."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 346f However, the white blood component had not been sufficient to "endow the Mongols with any particularly great capacity for civilization" or even to allow them to establish a permanent foothold in China.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 347 Gobineau emphasizes that the original savagery of the Mongols had always been exaggerated and that they had indeed possessed a "rather capable" state, military, urban, and economic organization, and that they had always been hostile to non-yellow civilizations.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 348f By contrast, they submitted so "reverently" to the Chinese social order, according to Gobineau, because they grasped "instinctively" that it was entirely tailored to a race to which they themselves also belonged. Despite their kinship, Gobineau continues, there had nevertheless been no identity "between the semi-barbarous peoples of Central Asia and the Chinese." The Mongols had remained recognizable as foreigners in China despite all assimilation and were therefore despised and ultimately expelled.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 348 Present: Manchu rule Fact check: Manchu rule of China The Manchu were by no means culturally inferior to the other Chinese, as Gobineau claims in his essay. The Kangxi Emperor (1654-1722), the Yongzheng Emperor (1678-1735), and the Qianlong Emperor (1711-1799), who commissioned the Siku Quanshu, the largest encyclopedia in Chinese history, were among the most culturally educated men of their time. Manchu rule also deeply intervened in the affairs and system of China. Thus they not only forced (which Gobineau also fails to mention) the Manchu queue upon the Han Chinese population, but above all reorganized all of China including by creating a Grand Council and by extending the Manchu military-social organization (the "Eight Banners") throughout the entire empire. The country also reached the greatest territorial extent in its entire history (1820) during the reign of the Qing. Read: Pamela Kyle Crossley (The Manchus, 1997), William T. Rowe (China's Last Empire, 2009) Gobineau treats the Manchu rule (Qing dynasty, since 1644) over China as a parallel case to the Mongolian conquest and uses it to support his thesis that, firstly, yellow invaders in China are fundamentally incapable of changing the country's order—which is entirely tailored to the yellow race—and, secondly, cannot maintain themselves permanently. He is convinced that a pattern exists here and that history repeats itself. The Qing Dynasty is still in full swing in the mid-19th century, making this a contemporary example.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 350 Gobineau considers the Manchu to be a member of the family of yellow races, yet describes them as a race that is distinct from that of the Chinese and, despite their military victories, stands culturally lower than them. He argues that with perfect racial identity between Manchu and Chinese, complete amalgamation would occur: the Manchu would adopt the existing Chinese conceptions, dissolve themselves, and merge with all social classes, so that only a single people would exist. Since this does not happen, however, this proves that despite their common belonging to the "yellow race," no perfect identity exists. Since the Manchu, without having added anything to the civilization of the Chinese, nevertheless attempt to rule over them, he predicts that their dynasty will sooner or later be "expelled." Future: Hypothetical conquest of China by England Gobineau completes his line of reasoning by asserting that a subjugation of China by a white people—unlike by yellow peoples—would actually succeed. To explore this scenario, he chooses the example of a plan by Lord Clive (*1725), the first British Governor of the Bengal Presidency, who according to Gobineau's claim had considered marching into China with an army of 30,000 men and subjugating the country.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 350 Gobineau imagines that Clive would employ a considerably larger army and, after conquering the country, declare himself emperor.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 351 He is certain that such a white conqueror would not—like the Mongols and Manchu—admire the indigenous achievements he encountered, but rather would destroy them because he recognizes their mediocrity. Through relationships with native women, the conqueror generation would then produce a generation of mixed-race offspring who would strengthen them numerically and help them govern better adapted to Chinese conditions and therefore more efficiently.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 352 Conclusion We must therefore conclude: 1. That in China, conquests originating from the yellow race, and thus only able to humble the victors' strength in the face of the vanquished's organization, have never changed and will never change the country's long-standing state; 2. That a conquest by whites, under certain conditions, would indeed have the power to modify and even forever overturn the current state of Chinese civilization, but only through the use of mixed-race populations. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 353 Gobineau considers the prospects of success for such an undertaking to be slim—however, not because of the difficulty of militarily subjugating China and keeping the Chinese under control; this appears to him easily surmountable. The real problem, he believes, lies in the fact that the Chinese order has become practically immutable through centuries of rule by a yellow government that was always entirely focused on preserving the status quo.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 353 Gobineau sees certain parallels to the Indian order, which has likewise remained unchanged for many centuries, although the Indians have had to struggle far harder for this stability. However, he considers the Indian order, Brahmanism, decidedly superior to the Chinese one, because it has "nearly achieved its goal" with its endeavor to preserve the Aryan race.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 354 India's and China's "offshoot societies" this sectionGobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 356ff Wilhelm von Humboldt Engelbert KaempferEngelbert Kaempfer 1727 The History of Japan London In Wikisource. John CrawfurdJohn Crawfurd 1820 History of the Indian Archipelago Edinburgh https://archive.org/details/CrawfurdArchipelago18201 3 volumes. Edmond Jurien de La GravièreEdmond Jurien de La Gravière 1812 Souvenirs des côtes de Chine. Les Mariannes et les Lou-Tchou. Extrait de la Revue des Deux Mondes Paris In Wikisource. Carl Ritter Évariste Régis HucÉvariste Régis Huc 1850 Souvenirs d’un voyage dans la Tartarie, le Thibet et la Chine pendant les années 1844, 1845 et 1846 Paris Librairie d’Adrien Le Clère & Cie https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32747/32747-h/32747-h.htm 2 volumes. In the geographical region east of India and China, Gobineau sees no independent civilizations, but only copies modeled either on Indian civilization (Ceylon, Java, Bali, Sumatra) or on Chinese civilization (Japan, Korea, Laos).Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 355f Still others, he claims, have received impulses from both (Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, Ladakh, the lands east of the Ganges, and part of the Malay–Indonesian archipelago).Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 356 Copies of India: Ceylon, Java thumb|Map of Asia and Australia (1853) Gobineau refers to these Asian societies, which owe their relatively high cultural level solely to India or China, as "secondary societies" (French: sociétés secondaires) and as "offshoot societies" (sociétés dérivées), and maintains that the same principles he illustrated with the examples of India and China may be observed here as well. Thus, Ceylon, Java, and Bali, he argues, were colonized very early by Brahmins and endowed with the caste system; despite these efforts, no valuable civilizations could emerge in these colonies because of their great distance from the Hindu motherland.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 356f He explains that the Malay mixed race living in these regions was more resistant to the caste system than the black aborigines of India, since by temperament they were "colder, more inclined to rationalizing, less sensitive"; Buddhism, being "cruder," was more readily adopted by these "half-yellow masses." Concerning Buddhism in Ceylon and Java, Gobineau writes that, "since the Aryan-Indian element was present on these two islands," it retained a "fairly noble" character there.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 357 Later, Islamization is said to have further contributed to their refinement.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 357f Copies of China Japan Fact check: Japan Population genetics: Gobineau’s claim that the Japanese population consisted of representatives of the yellow, black, and— to a small extent—white races is not only wrong from today’s perspective because the very concept of human races has become obsolete. His assessment of the Japanese is also rendered absurd by recent genomic analyses, which show that the modern Japanese population descends from both the indigenous Jōmon and the immigrant Yayoi, whose origins remain uncertain but lie in any case in East or Southeast Asia. Gobineau’s claim that Japanese culture is merely a simple copy of the Chinese is likewise untenable. Although certain Chinese influences (kanji, Buddhism, Confucianism, the ritsuryō system) are undeniable, the fundamental political (the Tennō system, the shogunate, feudal structures), religious (Shintō), social (bushidō), cultural (Japanese architecture, ukiyo-e, nō, kabuki, Japanese music) institutions and achievements are uniquely Japanese in origin. Read: R.H.P. Mason, J.G. Caiger (A History of Japan, 1972), :w:The Cambridge History of Japan (6 volumes, 1988–1999) Gobineau’s account of Japanese civilization occupies fewer than three printed pages, which he explains chiefly by claiming that, owing to Japan's isolationist policy (Sakoku, 1639–1853), very little about the country is known in the Western world at that time. In doing so, however, he either overlooked or deliberately ignored, among other works, Philipp Franz von Siebold's seminal Nippon (seven volumes, 1832–1851). Additional reasons for the cursory manner in which he writes about Japan are that he regards this country as merely a "copy" of China—and a very recent one—and that, unlike in the cases of India and China, he apparently could find no material in the available accounts of Japanese civilization that would serve his broader argumentative aims. Japan, according to Gobineau's account, is an offshoot society of China, as can be seen in the similarities between the two countries: the resemblance of their social institutions, the outward appearance of their culture, their isolationist policies, and their mythologies. As he points out, however, Japan differs fundamentally from China in racial terms: Although both were originally shaped by white Aryans, they developed racially along entirely different lines. In China, large-scale northern migrations absorbed the white element, so that the population, in his view, eventually became entirely yellow. Japan, by contrast, retained a heterogeneous composition: a Malay base population with a significant black admixture, possibly supplemented by remnants of white blood in the upper strata. Although Chinese influence introduced yellow elements, these did not lead to full homogenization; the non-yellow components—black and perhaps white—resisted complete Sinicization.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 358 For Gobineau, Japan's racial heterogeneity produces a mix of strengths and weaknesses. On the positive side, the black admixture gives Japan greater imagination and a richer mythological creativity than China. The remnants of white aristocratic blood preserve a martial ethos and a degree of autonomy from Chinese civilization, while the country—still in an early developmental stage—has not yet sunk into what he views as Chinese stagnation.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 358-360 At the same time, this racial mixture carries significant liabilities. Because Japan lacks a unifying principle such as the Indian caste system, its heterogeneous elements remain in constant tension, resulting in chronic political instability and a population that is difficult to govern. The curiosity and restlessness that Gobineau attributes to its non-yellow components make the Japanese, in his view, "dangerous," immature, and not fully developed. Ultimately, he considers Japan inferior not only to India—with its systematic racial ordering—but even to the more homogeneous and therefore more stable China. Korea, Laos, Ryukyo Kingdom Korea was even less studied than Japan in the mid-nineteenth century; even W.E. Griffis's study Corea: The Hermit Nation was only published in 1882. Without citing any sources for his "knowledge" of the country, Gobineau asserts that Korea, too, is merely a "copy of China," and even "less interesting" than Japan.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 360 Research on Laos began even later (Étienne Aymonier's Le Laos, le Cambodge et les populations sauvages de l'Indo-Chine, 1901–1904), a country on which Gobineau also says very little, though he considers it even more primitive. He judges the Ryukyu Kingdom in a similar way, although the scholarly world had already been well acquainted with it since 1818 through Basil Hall's travel account; Gobineau shows no knowledge of this book. The battle zones between Hindu and Chinese influence Gobineau counts among the countries shaped by both Indian and Chinese civilization Assam, Burma, Siam, Vietnam (the "Annamite states"), Nepal, Tibet, and the land north of Tibet (Central Asia, Mongolia).Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 361 In his view, all of these regions are marked by immense instability—though he never specifies what exactly he means by "instability." He attributes this condition to the constant struggle between the Indian (i.e., white) element and the Chinese (i.e., yellow) element.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 360f Without offering detailed justification, he claims that Brahmanic influence is strongest in Assam, Vietnam, and Burma, and therefore judges these regions most favorably. Conversely, he argues that Tibet and Mongolia rank culturally lowest because, as he sees it, the white element has almost entirely withdrawn from these areas.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 361–363 White peoples in ancient Central Asia this sectionGobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 363ff Carl Ritter Gerhard Friedrich MüllerGerhard Friedrich Müller 1744 Sammlung rußischer Geschichte 3 St. Petersburg https://archive.org/details/sammlungrussisc00unkngoog Alexander von Humboldt HerodotusHerodotus Histories (around 430 BC) Wilhelm GrimmWilhelm Grimm 1821 Ueber deutsche Runen Dieterichsche Buchhandlung Göttingen https://archive.org/details/ueberdeutscheru00grimgoog/page/n5/mode/2up Carl Friedrich von LedebourCarl Friedrich von Ledebour 1829 Reise durch das Altai-Gebirge und die soongorische Kirgisen-Steppe Berlin G. Reimer https://archive.org/details/reisedurchdasal03ledegoog The Bible The Eurasian nomads thumb|left|upright|The Mongol invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire (1219-1221) led by Genghis Khan was actually one of the bloodiest in human history. The death toll is estimated at 10-15 million. Following his discussion of East and Southeast Asia, Gobineau turns to the Eurasian steppe nomads, whom he classifies as belonging to the yellow Race—especially the Huns, Mongols, Tatars, and Kyrgyz. Many European thinkers – including several whom Gobineau had read (Ammianus Marcellinus, Jordanes, Marco Polo, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Edward Gibbon, Jules Michelet, François Guizot, Carl Ritter, and August von Haxthausen) – regarded these peoples as barbarians. Without naming any of them, Gobineau challenges this view at this point, arguing that not even the, to him, particularly striking fact that they had been scarcely touched by Hindu ideas and adhered instead to distorted Chinese notions was sufficient to render them culturally inferior. As evidence, he cites the bibliophily of the Kyrgyz, the founding of numerous Buddhist monasteries (among others by the Oirat aristocrat Ablai Taiji), and the fact that the Huns under Attila and the Mongols under Genghis Khan and under Timur had, at times, shaped the fate of the world.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 363f Gobineau resolves this apparent anomaly with his central thesis: their civilizational achievements resulted "from an ancient mixture of these races with certain lost white branches."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 364 He was aware of the Scythians and Sarmatians—also Eurasian steppe peoples—and mentions them explicitly elsewhere. That he did not include these two peoples in this particular section may be due to the fact that contemporary scholars regarded them not only as civilized but also as white, which conflicted with Gobineau's framework, since he could not conceive of whites as nomads. The great movements of the Indo-European peoples in Central Asia Fact check: Yuezhi and Wusun Modern research on the Yuezhi and Wusun presents a far more complex picture than the one drawn by Gobineau. In part, he was correct: both groups were of Indo-European origin, and Chinese sources do indeed describe them as fair-skinned, often with blue eyes or reddish hair. The Yuezhi in particular can clearly be identified as an Indo-European steppe people who migrated from the Gansu Corridor to Bactria and eventually founded the Kushan Empire. Genetic finds from the Tarim Basin also confirm a West Eurasian component. But much of Gobineau’s interpretation was wrong or greatly oversimplified. The Yuezhi and Wusun in no way correspond to his idea of "Aryan" peoples. Recent genetic studies instead reveal mixed populations: steppe ancestry combined with local Central Asian groups, sometimes over millennia. Even the famous "blond mummies" do not represent a homogeneous Indo-European migration, but rather complex genetic developments within the Tarim Basin. Instead of clear racial lines, current research shows a continuum of populations characterized by continuous migration, mixing, and cultural exchange. Furthermore, Gobineau also ignores the fact that both peoples were nomadic for larger parts of their history. Read: Victor H. Mair (The Tarim Mummies, 2000) In the next section, Gobineau advances his thesis that the sole civilization-forming white race originated in Central Asia by recounting eight supposedly white or Aryan peoples with "blond or red hair and blue eyes" who had lived in this region in antiquity. His knowledge of these peoples relies on publications by Joseph de Guignes, Julius Klaproth, and Carl Ritter, which presumably draw on historical Chinese ethnonyms. He lists them by name: the Yuezhi ("Yue-tchi"), the Wusun ("Ou-soun"), the Saka ("Szou," "Gètes," "Hindo-Scythe"), the "Ting-ling," "Khou-te," "Kian-kouans/Hakas," "Chou-le/Kin-tcha," and "Yan-Thsai." Of these, only the first three can still be identified with certainty today.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 312f, 364f, 367 As proof that these peoples must have been white, he cites, among other things, the fact that each of them founded societies.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 367 Gobineau discusses the Yuezhi and the Wusun in greater detail. According to Chinese sources, the Yuezhi, who in the 2nd century BCE lived along China's northwestern frontier, were attacked by the Xiongnu and forced to abandon their original homeland. They first retreated southwestward to the northern edge of the Tian Shan, but only twelve years later they were again driven out and fled across the mountains into Sogdia on the Seyhan River. There they encountered another "white" people, the Saka, who withdrew before the Yuezhi into the territory of the degenerate Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. The Yuezhi followed, overthrew this monarchy, and on its ruins founded an important new realm (meaning the Kushan Empire).Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 364f Like the Yuezhi, the Wusun were attacked and expelled by the Xiongnu, but they fled westward and eventually settled north of the Tian Shan on the banks of the Ili River. There they developed what – in Gobineau's depiction – quickly became a prosperous, pastoral state with permanent dwellings. Their rulers bore the title kuen-mi/kuen-mo (in the French original: kouen-mi/houen-mo), which Gobineau, following Ritter, interprets as linguistically related to the Germanic kunig ("King").Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 365 Around 107 BCE their realm was considered sufficiently stable that the Chinese, wishing to form a joint defense against the Huns, concluded an alliance with them and gave them a princess in marriage. Yet the internal fragmentation that Gobineau describes as typically "Aryan" led to the division of the people and, following various external attacks, ultimately to their dispersal.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 365-367 Gobineau identifies the settlement areas of the other white peoples he mentioned as the region north of the Caspian Sea (Yan-Thsai), the steppes of Dzungaria and Kazakhstan (Khou-te), as well as the lands north of Kashgar (Chou-le), west of Lake Baikal (Ting-ling), and north of the Yenisei (Kian-kuan/Haka). The Central Asian cradle of the Aryans thumb|A plateau in Kazakhstan. Is this how Gobineau imagined the original homeland of the Aryans? Based on his observations about the distribution of Aryan peoples in Central Asia in the second century BC, Gobineau then attempts to identify the Aryans' original homeland, where they settled in the primeval era. He prefaces this by stating that in primordial times, "before the descent of the white peoples," the black peoples "occupied" the southern part of the world, while the yellow race had by that time spread almost everywhere in the north.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 367 Gobineau locates the Aryans' original settlement area in a region whose center lies roughly in what is now Kazakhstan, bordered by the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea in the west, the Aral Sea, the upper reaches of the Huang He, and Qinghai Lake ("Khou-khou-noor") in the south, and the northwest of China (Kunlun and Altai ranges) in the east. Determining the northern boundary appears so difficult to him–presumably due to a lack of historical sources–that he refrains from specifying it.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 368f Archaeological and mythological evidence for an Aryan homeland in Siberia Fact check: The archaeological finds from Siberia The archaeological finds cited by Gobineau are real. They were collected in Siberia on behalf of Peter the Great starting in 1715 and are still held today as the "Siberian Collection" in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. A small portion of them originates from the Bronze Age Afanasievo and Andronovo cultures, and a larger portion from Scythian, Saka, and Sarmatian cultures (9th–3rd centuries BCE). Gobineau, who dated all of the finds to a mythical prehistory before 6000 BCE, was mistaken above all in his chronology. He was correct in assuming that the creators of these artifacts belonged to the Indo-European sphere, although he also made errors here—such as confusing the Turkic Orkhon inscriptions with Germanic runes. He was at least partially right in assuming that the makers of the artifacts had been settled. Overall, the finds do indeed attest to an Indo-European presence in Central Asia, but not to Gobineau's fantasy of a "Siberian original homeland of the white race." Read: Mikhail Artamonov (Treasures from Scythian Tombs in the Hermitage Museum, 1969), Sergei Rudenko (Frozen Tombs of Siberia, 1970) thumb|Gobineau mistook the Old Turkic script of the Orkhon inscriptions for Germanic runes. Gobineau writes that even after the yellow race had displaced most of the Whites from their Central Asian ancestral homeland, a large number of sedentary Whites remained in the northwest of China. According to him, the white peoples of Central Asia he lists—especially the Yuezhi and the Wusun—were the descendants of precisely these residual white tribes.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 369 He continues that these groups left behind significant cultural monuments in the region, which were later recovered archaeologically, including remnants of gold, silver, and copper mines discovered in Siberia in the seventeenth century, as well as monumental kurgans (a type of tumulus) which contained "gold, silver, and copper ornaments or implements in great quantity."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 370f Further discoveries of "thousands" of graves, fortifications, and mines are said to have followed, and in the Altai, the remains of entire former cities.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 371 Among the many additional finds that Gobineau lists in this chapter—because he is convinced that they clearly identify their creators as white—are, among other things, horse heads and horse tack, coins bearing rose motifs, as well as objects featuring Germanic runes and sphinx depictions.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 375-377 Further "evidence" that he adduces for the inclusion of these tribes among the white race consists of the mythical Airyanəm Vaēǰah of the Iranian Avesta, the Uttarakuru of Brahmanical tradition, the "Sacred Grove" of the Semnones, which Gobineau — wrongly — declares to be the place which they considered their Germanic original homeland, and finally also a "Hermionia of the Greeks," a designation unknown in philology, which he describes as "the homeland of the Hyperboreans, the people of the far north, the long-lived, whose virtue was profound, whose knowledge was boundless, whose existence was blessed."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 377f From the fact that the existence of an Aryan homeland is mentioned in the independently developed sources of four cultures, Gobineau then concludes that the originally unified Aryan primordial tribe must have divided at an early stage into four separate tribes, which have since existed apart from one another.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 378 The innately civilized Aryan ancestry Fact check: Human evolution By the time Gobineau composed his Essay, many major scholars had already challenged the biblical view of an originally civilized humanity. Buffon had integrated humans into natural history; Rousseau and the Scottish Enlightenment (Ferguson, Smith) described developmental stages from hunting to commercial societies; and early archaeologists such as Thomsen and Boucher de Perthes uncovered a deep prehistoric past marked by stone tools, extinct animals, and gradual cultural development. Lyell's geology had expanded Earth's timescale to millions of years, making a primitive human origin and the reality of human evolution increasingly unavoidable. Darwin's decisive contribution—demonstrating that humans evolved from ape-like ancestors—appeared only a few years later (1859–1871), but it confirmed and unified what many of Gobineau's contemporaries already suspected: the biblical model was scientifically untenable. Gobineau ignored this entire intellectual trajectory because it threatened the ideological system he sought to defend. By rejecting the emerging consensus on evolution and prehistory, he could reinterpret archaeological evidence as traces of an early white high civilization and depict non-white peoples not as earlier human stages but as degenerated offshoots—thus preserving his racial hierarchy. Read: Peter J. Bowler (Theories of Human Evolution, 1986), Misia Landau (Narratives of Human Evolution, 1991) It is important to Gobineau to emphasize that the highly developed Aryan civilization in Siberia was, in his view, older than any other known civilization, such as that of Semiramis. He is furthermore convinced that hardly any time could have elapsed between the emergence of this civilization and a "geological age" in which the Earth had been practically uninhabitable, an age whose end he places roughly in the 8th or 9th millennium BCE. From this he concludes that, once the Aryans had appeared, they must have developed into a state of “social perfection” in a very short time—without any intermediate stage of barbarism.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 378f As evidence for this, he also cites the Book of Genesis: The holy book admits no savages at the dawn of the world. Its first man acts and speaks not by blind whims, not according to purely brutish passions, but in accordance with the pre-established rule that theologians call natural law, which can have no other possible source than revelation [...]. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 379 Separation and first encounters of the human races Gobineau writes that the three human races originally lived together but were separated from one another "as a result of the catastrophes of our globe." Until their first encounters with "yellow hordes" and "black tribes," they had no reason to assume that any other humans existed besides themselves.Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 381 This manner of judging, far from being shaken by their first sight of Finns and Negroes, was on the contrary confirmed by it. The Whites could not imagine seeing beings equal to themselves in creatures who, through malicious hostility, hideous ugliness, brutal unintelligence, and the title of "sons of apes" that they claimed for themselves, seemed to relegate themselves to the rank of animals. Later, when conflicts arose, the elite race branded the two inferior groups—especially the black peoples—with the name "barbarians," which remained as the eternal testimony of a just contempt. Arthur de Gobineau Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Second volume, 1902, p. 381 Gobineau concludes the chapter by once again repeating his overall judgment that the yellow race—despite its materialism and its inclination toward destruction—is nevertheless "half-civilized and relatively civilizable," whereas the black race, which is "cut off even more from any contact with the illustrious family," remains wholly "sunk into a profound inertia."Gobineau Arthur de Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen. Zweiter Band 2 1902 Stuttgart Fr. Frommann 381f Continue reading Continue to Book 4. Back to Book 2. References Category:Book:Scientific racism in Germany