Introduction to the Study of the Hindu doctrines

Über

Introduction to the Study of the Hindu doctrines was René Guénon's first major book. It was published by and endorsed by Catholic publishers and scholars, despite its sympathetic treatment of a non-Christian religion. The book is based on his Ph.D. thesis. His Ph.D. thesis was rejected by Indologist Sylvain Lévi because it didn't conform to the standard Indological scholarship of the time.
The book, published in 1921, some topics of which will be included in the lecture he will give at the Sorbonne, December 17, 1925, consists of four parts.
The first part exposes the hurdles that prevented classical orientalism from a deep understanding of eastern doctrines: the "classical prejudice" which "consists essentially in a predisposition to attribute the origin of all civilization to the Greeks and Romans", the ignorance of certain types of relationships between the ancient peoples, linguistic difficulties, and the confusions arising about certain questions related to chronology, these confusions being made possible through the ignorance of the importance of oral transmission which can precede, to a considerable and indeterminate extent, the written formulation.