ABSTRACT
Since the publication of Edward Said’s groundbreaking Orientalism (1978) it has become a widely accepted idea that commentators on cultures other than their own often reveal as much, if not more, about their own assumptions and attitudes as they do about the objects of their scrutiny. The study of Buddhism by the British from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries is a particularly informative case in point. The voluminous public discourse on an alien religion that was conducted in scholarly and religious works and, increasingly after the middle of the nineteenth century, in the popular press and lecture halls, expresses fundamental concerns about the nature of religion, Christianity’s status as divinely revealed truth, and humanity’s own capacity for growth and progress. In the many treatments of nineteenth-century religious controversies, relatively little attention has yet been paid to the development of knowledge about Buddhism in Britain and to the effect that this knowledge had on the Victorians’ view of religion and of the world. 1
