Cambridge
University Press, 1988 (2006)
This book shows that contacts with Buddhism were
sporadically made in the UK before the 19th century, but Campbell
main argument refers precisely to this century since it focuses on constructive
representation of Buddhism in Great Britain during the Victorian period.
Victorian Buddhism was “an imaginative creation” of the
early nineteenth century when a number of aspects of Eastern culture were
defined and interpreted (p. 4). Buddhism was mainly analysed through textual
material, and therefore it became an interpretive construction built by those
who participated in the debate about it.
Until the 1840s, Buddhism was “instanced and
manifested” (p. 12) in the Orient and seen as other (p. 12). In the
next twenty five years “its primary location was the West, through the
progressive collection, translation, and publication of its textual past. Buddhism, by 1860, had come to
exist, not in the Orient, but in the Oriental libraries and institutes of the
West” (p. 13). Towards the end of the Victorian period, an expanded interest in
Buddhism was due to the huge popularity of Edwin Arnold’s blank-verse poem The Light of Asia, first published in
1879. This imaginative approach was contrasted by interest in historical and
factual evidence. Only towards the end of the century there were British
conversions to Buddhism, and one influential source of diffusion was Madame Blavatsky’s
esoteric Theosophical Movement.
Throughout the period examined the superiority of the
West was rarely questioned in British debate. The Oriental mind was considered “inferior”
(p. 41), and Buddhism was seen as the expression of “childish” attitudes (p.
48), even when these were approached sympathetically by Western intellectuals.
Some of the areas of discussion were similar to other
European debates with local accentuation of specific aspects. One of the topics
discussed was the historical existence of Gautama. The Buddha was often seen as
an example of moral positive values, especially compassion and tolerance, compatible
with Victorian ideals, but at the same time “the most common criticism levelled
at Buddhist morality was its selfishness” (p. 115). Interest was raised around the
topics of nihilism and atheism in relation to Buddhism. Curiously, to some
Victorians in the UK, rebirth appeared “to have a compatibility with an
evolutionary vision of the world” (p. 90) in that, like Darwin, it did not
employ the concept of creation. Nirvana and enlightenment were predominantly
seen as the “annihilation of the individual” (p. 102).
[Roberto Bertoni]
