ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how a Christian missionary’s identity is represented in the production of Buddhist knowledge and concepts through his English translation of P’alsangnok, a vernacular Korean biography of Gautama Buddha that was supposedly published in 1851 (Kim 2011). Previous scholars have argued that the translator, James Scarth Gale (1863–1937), a Canadian Presbyterian missionary to Korea, either held a negative attitude toward Korean folk beliefs, jumping on the Japanese colonial-political bandwagon (Han 1995; Lee 2007; Hwang 2010) or was favorable to Korean folk beliefs, including Buddhism (Lee 1993; Min 1999, 2004; Ryu 2002), mostly without meticulous research into his wide range of works, including his 1915 translation of the Buddhist text, The Life of the Buddha (1915), in this chapter. Based on a systemic textual analysis, this chapter argues that Gale’s favorable attitude toward Buddhism culminated in this translation, in which Christian-oriented logic and beliefs are extensively adapted, placing Buddhism on a par with Christianity.
