Review - Lopez From Stone to Flesh: A Short History of the Buddha by Donald Lopez; Journal of Buddhist Ethics (original) (raw)

Early Modern European Encounters with Buddhism

Oxford Research Encyclopedia, 2022

Historians Urs App and Martino Dibeltulo Concu have argued that the European "discovery" of Buddhism as a "religion" can be dated to the 16th century rather than the 19th, and that the presentation of the Buddha as a philosopher by the likes of Eugène Burnouf is a secularized holdover from the Jesuit accounts of the 16th century. These claims have a tenuous basis, and Burnouf's portrayal of the Buddha as a philosopher was a radical break from earlier Jesuit accounts. Unlike the Asian Buddhists who preceded him, Burnouf separated the facts from beliefs and concluded the Buddha was a human philosopher. The essay explores the 16th-century Jesuit encounter with Buddhists in Japan and the accounts that were generated therefrom, with particular attention to the notion that the Buddha taught both an inner materialist doctrine and an outer moral one; it looks to the dissemination and development of these ideas in the 17th and 18th centuries, with a focus on the "African hypothesis" as it is found in various European savants; it turns to the 19thcentury "discovery" of Buddhism by the likes of Ozeray, Abel-Rémusat, Hodgson, and Burnouf. it then draws out the implications of the defense of Masuzawa and Droit's position given in this article for the field of Buddhist studies, particularly with regard to methodological issues.

A Review of from Stone to Flesh: A Short History of the Buddha

The Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 2015

From Stone to Flesh: A Short History of the Buddha. By Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013, 978-0-226-49320-6 (hardback), $26.00. This rich volume may be seen as a prequel to Lopez's The Scientific Buddha (2012), though it is perhaps more properly a continuation or expansion of his introduction to the recent (2010) republication of Eugene Burnouf's Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism, translated by Lopez and Katia Buffetrille. And for readers acquainted with Lopez's earlier work, Prisoners of Shangri-La (1998), for example, there is much here that will be stylistically and methodologically familiar. With From Stone to Flesh, Lopez trains his gaze on the figure of the Buddha in the Western imagination. Tracking the development of this Buddha from the earliest European accounts up to Burnouf's presentation in the mid-nineteenth century, Lopez presents the evolving and shifting European perceptions of the Buddha while contextua...

Buddhism in the Early European Imagination: A Historical Perspective

Acta Orientalia Vilnensia, 2005

Centre of Oriental Studies, Vilnius University The article deals with the main historical and cultural approaches of Europeans to Buddhism in various Asian areas. The intention of author is to turn to discussion of those peculiar forms in which the knowledge of Buddhism was presented. This study sets out its aim to explore the way of engagement of the West with the Buddhist tradition, emphasizing the early period of the encounter and those initial imaginative constructions and early discourses that shaped the nascency of the scholarly discipline. Conclusion is made that Buddhism has been represented in the Western imagination in a manner that reflects specifically Western concerns, interests, and aspirations. Europeans saw themselves as possessing the criteria upon which the judgement of the religious, social, and cultural value of Buddhism rests. Buddhism was constructed, essentialized and interpreted through Western images of the Oriental mind that provided ideological strategies ...

Buddhist Monks and Christian Friars: Religious and Cultural Exchange in the Making of Buddhism

Buddhist Monks and Christian Friars: Religious and Cultural Exchange in the Making of Buddhism, 2016

There is a global consensus that various traditions practised throughout parts of Asia can all be linked to one cohesive religion called ‘Buddhism’. However, there is a long history as to how the West came to that consensus. Prior to the Iberian exploration, it was common to divide the religious world into four categories: Christianity, Judaism, Islam and all others under various permutations of superstition, heathenism or paganism. This article explores the rich encounter and exchange between Iberian friars and Buddhist monks, particularly in Siam (modern-day Thailand) that catalysed the identification of a common tradition in Asia thought to be centred on the person of the Buddha. It argues that one important part of the history of the identification of Buddhism as a single and bona fide religion begins with the encounter in the sixteenth century of Spanish friars with Buddhism. The social and political strength of institutional Buddhism in Siam, coupled with recognition of similar religious life and appreciation of ascetic values between monks and friars, triggers the identification by the friars of a distinct religion across Asia. The friars made the case that they were witnessing people with their own religion, distinguishable from undifferentiated superstition or idolatry. The consensus of the friars introduced an ideational core for the idea of Buddhism, based on one founder common to traditions in East and South-east Asia. These arguments set a foundation for Buddhism as a religion thought to closely mirror Christianity.