CHRISTIAN TRUTH VERSUS BUDDHIST FALSEHOOD

Throughout the course of this study we have seen Victorian interpretations of Buddhism evidencing a polarity of assimilation and rejection: assimilating Buddhism in so far as it correlates with normative Victorian ideas and values; rejecting Buddhism in so far as it is incommensurable with these. To this extent, the analysis of the Victorian view of Buddhism simply is an analysis of the broad range of evaluations of it. Be that as it may, it is fruitful to concentrate briefly on the specific understandings which Victorians had of the truth and value of Buddhism and, in particular, how they measured it against what was to them in general the final criterion of religious truth and value – that is, their own understanding of the Christian tradition.

As is to be expected from what we have seen thus far, there are a variety of evaluations of Buddhism ranging from complete rejection of its religious truth and value to virtual acceptance of it as a necessary Eastern preliminary to the Christian tradition.

Certainly there is throughout the Victorian period no unified evaluation of it. Indeed, ambivalent and various evaluations of it had accumulated by the middle of the century. In 1854, for example, John Kesson observed that, ‘By many it has been praised as a most enlightened form of idolatry, and superior in its religious spirit to either Confucianism or Taoism. Others have decried Buddhism as the very doctrine of devils.’ In part, of course, this was the result of the fact that, in the nineteenth century as in most other centuries since Christ, there was a range of Christian attitudes to other religions.