Continuity and discontinuity in British writing
The Buddha
The main movement in British writing is away from locating the Buddha in the
mythological realm and towards affirming his historicity and humanity, and away
from locating him within a series of Buddhas equally endowed with
Buddhahoo4 and towards presenting him as a single, remarkable human. Some
writers of the early decades stress that Buddhists believe there have been many
Buddhas, of whom Gotama was the last, and that Gotama himself underwent
numerous preparatory lives before Buddhahood. Some claim the Buddha was a
divinity, some that he was a man who was divinized. Others merge the two. Biographical accounts are usually peppered with the miraculous. At this stage in the century, the figure of the Buddha is not rooted in history but in narratives that
Suggest the mythological. Harvard and Joinville are exceptions to this, Harvard in
his suggestion that the Buddha was a reformer and Joinville in his defiant
declaration that he would consider the Buddha a man. Davy also uses 'reformer'
vocabulary: a Buddha comes 'to reform mankind'(Davy 1821:205).
In the middle years, the Buddha as one of a series continues to be emphasized,
some using the 'avatdra' vocabulary of Hinduism, suggesting more transference
from orientalist discourse in India than in earlier decades. Whether Gotama was
man first or divinity first, remains important. At the same time, there is a more
obvious attempt to distinguish between the historical and the mythological.
Binning is one example but the tendency can be seen most strongly in Gogerly,
Forbes and Knighton, who mercilessly de-mythologize the Buddha biography.
Gogerly draws on the Tipitaka. Knighton, followed later by Spence Hardy, uses
his imagination to evoke what could actually have happened in the Buddha's life,
aligning himself with William Jones, Harvard and Davy in presenting the Buddha
as reformer. But biographies that distance the Buddha from the human continue
as in, for instance, Spence Hardy ’s rendering of Sinhala sources it A Manual of
Buddhism.
In the last decades, there is further humanizing and individualizing of the
Buddha. With increased access to textual sources, Rhys Davids and Copleston
stress that there is a Tipitaka biography in keeping with Western historical
method. Former Buddhas disappear. Although some missionaries stress the
inaccessibility of the historical Buddha because of textual unreliability, the winning
picture of the Buddha is of a heroic, compassionate man. Some missionaries use
this to undermine Arnold's representation, but, generally speaking, the Buddha as
human teacher, truth-seeker and empathizer with the world
is suffering becomes
worthy of praise, even by those who pronounced his teaching false.
As the twentieth century opens, two voices run counter to this progression: the
theosophist tendency to interpret Buddhahood in terms of esoteric theory and
Allan Bennett's faith-based conviction that the Buddha is far more than human.