The Lotus and the Lion: Buddhism and the British Empire

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. As this ordering of languages suggestions, the first serious Western engagements with Buddhism began not in England but in other European countries, in particular France and Germany, but, as I subsequently discuss, the center of Buddhist studies shifted to England by mid century. For key events, dates, and people, see appendix 1. 2. As here with my use of “Siddhartha Gautama” instead of the Pali “Siddhatta Gotama,” I have chosen to standardize throughout this book on the Sanskrit rather than the Pali terminology. This does not reflect a preference but rather a practical recognition that a greater number of Westerners are more familiar with “Dharma” than “Dhamma,” “karma” than “kamma,” and “Nirvana” than “Nibbana,” for instance. 3. Victorian authors who commented upon Christian missionaries in Buddhist territory include Alabaster and Eitel. Among twentieth-century studies, see Jacobson, Jensen, and Prothero, The White Buddhist. 4. My primary source for places and dates concerning the Stupa at Amaravati and Colonel Colin MacKenzie is Robert Knox, Amaravati: Buddhist Sculpture from the Great Stupa, especially 18–20. I also draw in this paragraph on Charles Allen, The Search for the Buddha: The men who discovered India’s lost religion, and the argument here about the role of Europeans in preserving the ancient history of Buddhism is developed further in chapter 4. 5. On Olcott and the Ceylonese Buddhist revival, see Godwin, 321–22, and, as the best general source, Prothero, The White Buddhist. 6. Sources on the earliest contacts between Greeks and Buddhists along the northwestern border of current-day India include Bachelor, 7 and 26; Clarke, 37; Dejong; and Fields, 13). 220 ~ Notes to Pages 10–21 7. The earliest contacts between European missionaries and Buddhist nations starting in the thirteenth century have been documented and discussed in (Almond, 7; Bachelor, 229; Dejong; Droit, 15; Jacobson, 150; Jensen, 42; Welbon, 11). 8. For an introduction to the influence of exposure to Eastern religions and philosophies on the American Transcendentalists see Dejong; Godwin 309; Schwab, 200; and Fields, 60). The best sourcebook I have found on the impact of Eastern thought on the United States is Tweed and Prothero. 9. My primary source on the 1851 census is McLeod, Religion and Society in England , 1850–1914, in particular, the first chapter, “Patterns of Religious Belonging.” 10. My primary sources for facts about the history of Nonconformity in Britain are McLeod, Religion and Society in England, 1850–1914, and Parsons, “From Dissenters to Free Churchman: The Transitions of Victorian Nonconformity.” 11. These trends did not apply to Catholicism, which almost alone resisted pluralism , maintaining unity of doctrine and church, and did so while reestablishing bishops in England for the first time in centuries in 1850 and while the number of Catholics increased to the end of the century as the number of Anglicans declined. Catholic commentators, though not theologically pluralistic, generally tended to be intellectually curious and thorough in their treatments of Buddhism. 12. This claim is supported by the fact that a search of the PCI (Periodicals Content Index) database for articles published with “Buddha” or “Buddhism” in the title reveals this pattern: 3 in the period 1840–1850; 0 in 1851–1860; 13 in 1861–1870; 74 in 1871–1880; 148 in 1881–1890; 367 in 1891–1900; 287 in 1901–1910; and 243 in 1911–1920. 13. See for example Green, “Christianity and Buddhism,” in the Proceedings of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool in 1890; Monier-Williams, “Buddhism and Christianity,” which appeared in the Evangelistic Repository in 1891; and Max Müller, “Christianity and Buddhism,” in The New Review of 1891. 14. Other articles that discuss the presumed similarities between the histories of Protestantism and Buddhism include Clarke, “Buddhism: or, the Protestantism of the East,” in Atlantic Monthly in 1869; Bode, “Women Leaders of the Buddhist Reformation,” in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland in 1893; and, Rattigan, “Three Great Asiatic Reformers: A Study and a Contrast” in the London Quarterly Review in 1899. 15. The following articles are representative of a body of others that recounted the life of the Buddha: Kellogg, “Kingdom of, Life of, and Legend of Buddha,” in Bibliotheca Sacra in 1882; McKerlie, “Western Buddhism,” in Asiatic Quarterly Review in 1890; and, Lilly, “The Message of Buddhism to the Western World,” in The Fortnightly Review in 1905. A number of other articles focused on the Jataka, a collection of folkloric tales about the past lives, birth...