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BUDDHIST STUDIES IN THE WEST
languages and printed 22 times between ca. 1470 and the end of the eighteenth century.20
Henri de Lubac summarizes the knowledge which the Western world had acquired during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in the following words: “Quelques récits curieux, quelques détails extérieurs, quelques descriptions de la vie des bonzes et des lamas, c'était donc à peu près tout. La grande religion d'Orient n'apparaissait pas dans son individualité; elle n'était même pas nommée. De ses doctrines, autant dire qu'on ne savait rien” (op. cit., p. 47).
Vasco da Gama's voyage to India in 1497–8 inaugurated a new chapter in the history of the relations between the West and Asia. In the sixteenth century missionaries went out to China, Japan, Ceylon, Siam and Indochina. In 1542 Franciscus Xaverius (1506-1552), a Spanish Jesuit, left for India. In the following year he arrived in Goa which had been occupied by the Portuguese in 1910. In 1547 Xaverius met a Japanese merchant, named Yagiro, and brought him back to Goa. Yagiro explained to Xaverius and other missionaries the history of Xaca (i.e. Sākya), his cult and the life of the bonzes. Information obtained from Yagiro was sent to Europe in letters written by Xaverius himself (22.6. 1549), by Cosme de Torrès (25.1.1549), by the Fathers of Goa and by Father Nicolas Lancilotto (26.12.1948).21
Xaverius left Goa for Japan in 1549. He died three years later. It is not possible to study here in detail the work of missionaries in Japan and other Asian countries in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Henri de Lubac has given some information on the knowledge of Buddhism which they obtained in these countries. No detailed study has been made by Buddhist scholars of the many reports sent by missionaries and of the publications which are based upon these reports. Only a detailed investigation could show how reliable is the information contained in these publications. A study of this kind is hampered by the fact that many of them are found only in very few libraries. Many reports and letters have not yet been published and are kept
20 Cf. M. Letts (ed.), Mandeville's Travels. Texts and Translations, 2 vols., London, Hakluyt Society, 1953; M. Letts, Sir John Mandeville. The Man and his Book, London, 1949.
21 Cf. Epistolae S. Francisci Xaverii, nova editio (G. Schurhammer et I. Wicki), t. II, Roma, 1945, pp. ISI-153; R. P. Schurhammer, Die zeitgenössischen Quellen zur Geschichte Portugiesisch-Asiens zur Zeit des bl. Franz Xaver, 1538-1552, Leipzig, 1932; Guillaume Postel, Des Merveilles du Monde, Paris, 1552.
