The Adaptation of Buddhism to the West
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3896108 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Frédéric Lenoir (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1999 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 187 |
| Pages | 100-109 |
| Publication date | 1999-09-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Diogenes (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0392-1921 • E-ISSN: 1467-7695 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/039219219904718710 |
| OpenAlex | W2056507029 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
Buddhism was not really known in the West until a little more than 150 years ago. Although since the thirteenth century there had been numerous contacts with local Buddhist traditions, the travellers and missionaries of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance had not yet brought to light the history of Buddhism and its unity across this immense diversity of worship and doctrine, disseminated through most of the countries of Asia. Of course, since the seventeenth century some Europeans had guessed at the Indian origin of the Buddha and they succeeded in pinning down his historical existence after a fashion. In 1691 and 1693 Simon de la Loubère, Louis XIV's envoy at the court of the king of Siam, published remarkable research which established the possibility of a link between the different regions of Siam, Ceylon, Japan and China and conjured up the possible existence of a single founder long before Christ. But this far too isolated knowledge had scarcely any impact in Europe. It was only with the foundation of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784 that orientalism was to enjoy a rapid and decisive expansion. The word 'Buddhism' appeared from the 1820s onwards, and with it the first conceptualization of a tree with many branchings. But it was not until the publication, in 1844, of Eugène Burnouf's magisterial Introduction l'histoire du buddhisme indien, that more detailed knowledge became available, thanks to a critical scrutiny of the most varied sources. The works of the French scholar and of other pioneers in Buddhist studies - mainly Alexander Csoma de Koros and Edmond Foucaux on Tibet, Jean-Pierre Abel-Remusat and Stanislas Julien on China, Christian Lassen and Spence Hardy on Ceylon - were to give rise to a tremendous craze for Buddhism in Europe. Since then there has been no break in the successive waves disseminating it right up to the present day, when the majority of Western countries appear to be so receptive to the message of the Buddha that for some years the media have been insistently questioning the reasons for this 'Buddhist wave
Archaeology · Buddhism · Geography · Political science · Sociology · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.19 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2005 - 2024 (20) |
| Highly cited | No |