Identity Through the Myths of Others
When seeing European publications of foreign myths and systems of belief, most wouldn’t give it a second thought- such topics are fascinating, strange to some, sell well, and are frankly cool as hell; especially to a Victorian culture that is just beginning to make the turn towards globalism with the advent of locomotive transportation on the Eurasian continent and the continued settling of the ‘New World’. However, if you look a little deeper into why Victorian Europeans were publishing such things, you’ll see a trend of validation- a solidification of the Victorian-European identity. Such examples would be through a fascination with Ancient Egyptian women’s social roles, or the inflation of aspects that don’t mesh well with the Judeo-Christian system of belief , thereby justifying imperial efforts. The following items are artefacts representing this fascination and personal introspection.
Photo from Book of the Dead- Judgement
This plate illustration depicts Ani and his wife (left) having the former’s heart weighed against a feather by the god Anubis (right) in the afterlife, a judgement of conscience. In a large book published by The British Museum in 1890, this would have presented those of Victorian England a strikingly foreign depiction of life after death.
Tatsu
This ink on paper illustration depicts Tatsu, a dragon of Japanese myth, an all-powerful being of multiple varieties, from defining the course of rivers to protecting unseen hoards of wealth. Published in a treatment of Japanese myth in 1902, this piece would have suggested a deviation from contemporary European Judeo-Christian belief, with the notion that a being other than God is responsible for the shaping of the natural world.
Kali
This is a plate illustration of a brass statue of the Hindu goddess Kali, known to represent Death, Time, and Destruction, found in a book on the Hindu Pantheon from 1810. This would have been a marked departure from existing European notions of visual representations of deities, causing some to question the worship of a being so close to Judeo-Christian images of demonic entities while potentially validating Imperial efforts in the Indian subcontinent. Funnily enough, there is also a plate illustration of a brass of Jesus’s crucifixion in this same work, which is presented as foreign to the Hindu people the author worked with.
Chinese Buddhism frontispiece
This is an illustration depicting the Buddha flanked by two monks, found in the frontispiece of an exploration of Chinese Buddhism, published in 1910. Interestingly, this piece was written by a Christian missionary in China, and sought to explore the diffusion of Buddhism in Asia through a model similar to the spread of contagions. This serves as an explicit example of Victorian Europeans exploring foreign belief systems through their own.