page_title: Mircea Eliade
section_title: University studies and Indian sojourn
hierarchical_section_title: Mircea Eliade / Biography / University studies and Indian sojourn
caption_attribution_description: English: Mircea Eliade portrait
context_page_description: Mircea Eliade was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day. His theory that hierophanies form the basis of religion, splitting the human experience of reality into sacred and profane space and time, has proved influential. One of his most influential contributions to religious studies was his theory of Eternal Return, which holds that myths and rituals do not simply commemorate hierophanies, but, at least to the minds of the religious, actually participate in them.
  His literary works belong to the fantastic and autobiographical genres. The best known are the novels Maitreyi, Noaptea de Sânziene, Isabel și apele diavolului and Romanul Adolescentului Miop, the novellas Domnișoara Christina and Tinerețe fără tinerețe, and the short stories Secretul doctorului Honigberger and La Țigănci.
  Early in his life, Eliade was a journalist and essayist, a disciple of Romanian far-right philosopher and journalist Nae Ionescu, and a member of the literary society Criterion.
context_section_description: Between 1925 and 1928, he attended the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Philosophy and Letters in 1928, earning his diploma with a study on Early Modern Italian philosopher Tommaso Campanella. In 1927, Eliade traveled to Italy, where he met Papini and collaborated with the scholar Giuseppe Tucci.
  It was during his student years that Eliade met Nae Ionescu, who lectured in Logic, becoming one of his disciples and friends. He was especially attracted to Ionescu's radical ideas and his interest in religion, which signified a break with the rationalist tradition represented by senior academics such as Constantin Rădulescu-Motru, Dimitrie Gusti, and Tudor Vianu (all of whom owed inspiration to the defunct literary society Junimea, albeit in varying degrees).
  Eliade's scholarly works began after a long period of study in British India, at the University of Calcutta. Finding that the Maharaja of Kassimbazar sponsored European scholars to study in India, Eliade applied and was granted an allowance for four years, which was later doubled by a Romanian scholarship. In autumn 1928, he sailed for Calcutta to study Sanskrit and philosophy under Surendranath Dasgupta, a Bengali Cambridge alumnus and professor at Calcutta University, the author of a five volume History of Indian Philosophy. Before reaching the Indian subcontinent, Eliade also made a brief visit to Egypt. Once in India, he visited large areas of the region, and spent a short period at a Himalayan ashram.
  He studied the basics of Indian philosophy, and, in parallel, learned Sanskrit, Pali and Bengali under Dasgupta's direction. At the time, he also became interested in the actions of Mahatma Gandhi, whom he met personally, and the Satyagraha as a phenomenon; later, Eliade adapted Gandhian ideas in his discourse on spirituality and Romania.
  In 1930, while living with Dasgupta, Eliade fell in love with his host's daughter, Maitreyi Devi, later writing a barely disguised autobiographical novel Maitreyi (also known as "La Nuit Bengali" or "Bengal Nights"), in which he claimed that he carried on a physical relationship with her.
  Eliade received his PhD in 1933, with a thesis on Yoga practices. The book, which was translated into French three years later, had significant impact in academia, both in Romania and abroad.
  He later recalled that the book was an early step for understanding not just Indian religious practices, but also Romanian spirituality. During the same period, Eliade began a correspondence with the Ceylonese-born philosopher Ananda Coomaraswamy. In 1936–1937, he functioned as honorary assistant for Ionescu's course, lecturing in Metaphysics.
  In 1933, Mircea Eliade had a physical relationship with the actress Sorana Țopa, while falling in love with Nina Mareș, whom he ultimately married. The latter, introduced to him by his new friend Mihail Sebastian, already had a daughter, Giza, from a man who had divorced her. Eliade subsequently adopted Giza, and the three of them moved to an apartment at 141 Dacia Boulevard. He left his residence in 1936, during a trip he made to the United Kingdom and Germany, when he first visited London, Oxford and Berlin.
caption: Eliade in 1933
exif: {}