FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL CONTINUED the tradition of locating the origins of the Germans in India, but eventually took an adversarial stance against South Asian religions. In Über die Sprache und die Weisheit der Indier (On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians, 1808) he described Hinduism and Buddhism as not only pale imitations of the perfected Christianity to come, but essentially nihilist. He thus established a viewpoint about Asian religion that would prove detrimental to the interpretation of Asian religious texts well into the twentieth century. The primary problem for Schlegel's encounter with Hinduism and the reason for his eventual attack on it is the irreconcilability of Eastern concepts that have no Western equivalents, such as the concept of the void. He was unable to reconcile these cyclical and rectilinear systems because of what one might call his “fear of infinity.”

Schlegel's original fascination with Sanskrit literature reflected his longing to find in India a unifying spiritual revolution outside traditional classical and Christian frameworks that might synthesize religion, philosophy, and art. In defining this revolution, he emphasized the similarities between Vedantic philosophy and German idealism, which both center on questions of dualism. Schlegel's conversion to Catholicism, which occurred during the same week in April 1808 in which Über die Sprache und die Weisheit der Indier was published, is also indicative of such longing.