Buddhism and Romanticism

Abstract

Although Buddhism was quite likely first encountered by Europeans during the Greek military incursion into Central Asia led by Alexander the Great, complete knowledge of the religion inaugurated by the historical Buddha only emerged into European consciousness during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a temporal period when economic colonialism, enlightenment epistemology, linguistic Orientalism, and emergent romanticism combined to create the conditions for the full flowering of the dharma in Europe. The following essay provides a preliminary analysis of the historical conditions governing phases of punctuated encounters between Europeans and Buddhist cultures and the developing intellectual contexts during the period of romanticism that ultimately led to the emergence and subsequent reception of Buddhism in European literature and philosophy. The opening section of the essay briefly maps critical coincidences between these seemingly disparate systems of thought and practice; the second section thoroughly traces the long history of punctuated encounters that peaks during the romantic period itself; and the third section analyzes the counterflow of textual materials from colonial circumferences like Nepal and Tibet to centers of Orientalist scholarship in Russia, England, France, and Germany and their subsequent reception and assimilation within Western thought.