This dissertation analyzes the development of the academic discipline of Indology and the parallel cultural diffusion of knowledge about South Asia within nineteenth-century Germany. Because Indology was comparatively new and had to struggle for its existence against tight budgets and classical philologists, its defenders used every argument they could, especially claiming ancient India's antiquity, beauty, and unique connection to modern Germany. Beginning in the 1820s, Indologists succeeded in weaning scientific Indology from its romantic roots and asserted the importance of their discipline for Science. Throughout the rest of the century, by successfully funding trained scholars, gaining access to manuscripts sources, publishing texts, and coordinating their efforts through international organizations, they were able to establish German Indology as preeminent in the world. This growth is especially striking, since Germany had no colonies in or near India, although German Indologists maintained a strong relationship with the British who did. Another factor in Indology's growth was the symbiotic, if not always comfortable, relationship between academic Indology and the enthusiasm for ancient India outside the university. Indology in Germany owed its birth to the interests of leading romantic intellectuals such as Friedrich Schlegel. Throughout the nineteenth century, enthusiasts gained access to Indian material through the growing wealth of research German Indologists generated, and the tremendous expansion of this new field benefited from the educational reform and rise of new sciences in German universities. Indology was able to flourish to the degree it did because Germans Indologists pursued scientific activities and made pointed arguments about the cultural and intellectual relevance ancient India had to modern Germany.
