Brief History Of Buddhist Studies In Europe And Maerica

Author(s): J W De Jong
Publisher: J W De Jong

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BUDDHIST STUDIES IN THE WEST
this point also the relations between Buddhism and classical Yoga or preclassical Yoga have often been discussed. In 1898 La Vallée Poussin reacted against the definition of Buddhism as an atheist religion and consecrated a chapter of his book on Buddhism to Buddhist Yoga.28 Senart studied in detail Yoga influence on Buddhism, but he has been unable to convince other scholars that the Yoga which influenced Buddhism was already Yoga in its classical form.29 In his Origines bouddhiques he arrived at a different conclusion, according to which Buddhism was influenced by a form of Visņuïte Yoga older than the Yoga of the epic and not yet associated with Sāmkhya.30
La Vallée Poussin and Beckh have stressed the importance of Yoga in Buddhism. La Vallée Poussin declared that Buddhism is essentially pure Yoga, Nirvana mysticism.31 Similarly Hermann Beckh (1875-1937) stated that “Der ganze Buddhismus ist durch und durch nichts als Yoga.”32 Oldenberg recognized the importance of Yoga in Buddhism but was not willing to consider Buddhism as a branch of Yoga.33 For a bibliography on Yoga and Buddhism one must refer to La Vallée Poussin's publications.34 La Vallée Poussin does not mention Beckh's Buddhismus (I-II, 1916)35 or Keith's chapter on Buddhism and Yoga in his Buddhist Philosophy (1923, pp. 143-145).
While texts were edited and translated and the problems connected with their interpretation were studied by scholars in Europe, in India inscriptions were discovered and edited and Buddhist monuments described and interpreted. Among the inscriptions, those of Asoka are the most important for the historian. It is not necessary to relate the first attempts at deciphering by James Prinsep (1799–1840) in 1834 and the following years. Burnouf is the first scholar of Buddhism to have studied the Asokan inscriptions. He remarked that these epigraphical monuments contain a considerable number
28 Bouddhisme, études et matériaux, pp. 82-93. 29 Bouddhisme et Yoga, RHR, 42, 1900, pp. 345-365; Nirvāṇa, Album Kern (Leiden, 1903), pp. 101-104. 30 Origines bouddhiques, AMG, B. V., tome 25, 1907, pp. 115-158. 31 Le bouddhisme et le yoga de Patañjali, MCB, V, 1937, p. 227. 32 Buddhismus, II, Berlin und Leipzig, 1916, p. II. 33 Die Lehre der Upanishaden (1923), pp. 275-288.
34 Le dogme et la philosophie du bouddhisme (1930), pp. 182-184; Le bouddhisme et le yoga de Patañjali, MCB, V, p. 223, n. 1.
35 Latest edition in one volume, Stuttgart, 1958.
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