Rudolf Otto and the Mysterium Tremendum: Journal of Vaishnava Studies

Abstract

Rudolf Otto (1869–1937) is a seminal figure in the academic study of religion widely known due to his book Das Heilige of 1917 (Eng. trans., The Idea of the Holy, 1923). In this famous work Otto has occasion in passing to cite the Gîtå and adds an appendix giving the text to much of Gîtå chapter 11 as a supreme exemplar of the experience of holy dread—the experience he locates at the heart of religion. Far less known is that at the end of his academic career in the first half of the 1930s, he turned his attention fully to the Gîtå, publishing a translation and two tracts on the text. These were collected in an English translation, The Original Gîtå: The Song of the Supreme Exalted One (1939).