The student of religion has been well served by a number of volumes devoted to the history of Christian thought in the nineteenth century. But very few studies have been devoted to the nineteenth-century interpretations of non-Christian religions, or to the role that these played in the shaping of Victorian culture. This volume is intended partly to fill that gap by examining the creation and interpretation of Buddhism in Great Britain during this period. It is to be hoped that the examination of the way in which Victorian thinkers made sense of the East, and of the means by which Victorian Christians came to terms with an alien tradition both complementary to and opposite to their own, will cast some new light on a period which was seminal for the development of contemporary Western religious pluralism.

To a large extent, I have allowed the interpreters of Buddhism to speak for themselves. At one level, this is a means to show forth the subtle and complex connexions between the network of texts which comprise Victorian discourse about Buddhism. But at another level, a deeper one, it is intended to evoke in the reader not only a cognitive apprehension but a sense of, and a feeling for, those aspects of the discourse that are uniquely Victorian. My intention has been to supply as much detail as space allowed to enable the reader personally to encounter Victorian Buddhism.

I should like to express my thanks to a number of people: to Professor Charles Long for a number of stimulating conversations; and to my colleagues Dr Richard Hutch and Mr Rod Bucknell who read earlier drafts of this study and made many helpful suggestions.