Americans Who Work for the Buddhist Cause By Arjanyai At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

In the United States, an American went to work for the revival of Buddhism in a Buddhist country before Buddhism was introduced to America. This person was Colonel H.S. Olcott who went to Ceylon in 2423/1880, established the Theosophical Society, and worked for the revival of Buddhism, Buddhist culture and education in that country. His famous book “Buddhist Catechism” is a work of great clarity. In an attempt to outline the basic beliefs of the Buddhists to which the Theravada, Mahayana and all other schools could agree, Olcott wrote in 2434/1891 “Fourteen Basic Buddhist Beliefs” which was accepted by Buddhist leaders of several countries at a congress in Madras.1

In 2436/1893 Anagarika Dharmapala of Ceylon represented Buddhism at the World’s Parliament of Religions held in Chicago. It was at this time that Mr. C.T.S. Strauss declared himself a Buddhist by receiving the Threefold Refuge and the Five Precepts from Dharmapala. Strauss was probably the first American to become a Buddhist. It was also during this same period of time that the first Japanese Buddhist Mission was said to arrive in San Francisco and commence their activities in the United States. This can be regarded as the introduction of Buddhism to the United States.

In 2427/1884 Dr. Paul Carus published in Illinois his famous book, “The Gospel of the Buddha.” The book has gone through many printings and over one million copies of it have been sold since its first appearance. During this time, the Harvard Oriental Series was founded by Charles Rockwel Lanman and Henry Clarke Warren. Among the works included in this series were Warren’s Buddhism in Translations (2439/1896) and Eugene Watson Burlingame’s Buddhist Legends which is the English translation of the Dhammapada-Commentary (2464/1921). A Buddhist Bible by Dwight Goddard was also an American contribution to Buddhist studies. Goddard was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 2404/1861. He accepted the message of the Buddha while he was a Christian missionary in China. Later he founded a brotherhood called “The Followers of the Buddha,” which became an inspiration to other American Buddhists. In the field of Sanskrit Buddhist studies, an American contribution was made by Professor Edgerton who compiled for Yale University the “Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Grammar and Dictionary” published in 1953. However, in comparison with the numerous works produced in Europe, American literary activities of this early period were nearly beneath notice.

Generally speaking, it was Europe that played the central part in carrying the message of the Buddha to the West in the early period. Academic studies and scholarly research became characteristic of the Buddhist activities during these first hundred years. Names of Orientalists and Indologists, historians and philologists, along with their scholarly works, filled up the pages of the early history of Buddhism in the West. Names and titles cited above are only pioneers and some distinguished examples. A great number of other scholars, both pupils and colleagues of these leading figures, had their shares in this Western tradition of Buddhist scholarship and academic study of Buddhism. Some popular texts and works of importance have had many printings or were published in many versions. Among popular texts, the best known is the Dhammapada, which has been translated into many languages and of which not less than twenty versions have been published. Among the discourses of the Buddha, the Kalamasutta, rightly called the first charter of free thought, seems to be the best known and the most oftenquoted, the only possible exception being the First Sermon. Among post-canonical works the Visuddhimagga and the Abhidhammatthasangaha are next only to the Milindapanha in popularity and in publication statistics.

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