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Johan van Manen
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/22/20

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The Dutch orientalist Johan van Manen in 1898

Mari Albert Johan van Manen (Nijmegen, 16 April 1877 – Kolkata, 17 March 1943) was a Dutch orientalist and the first Dutch Tibetologist. A large portion of his collected manuscripts and art and ethnographic projects now make up the Van Manen collection at Leiden University's Kern Institute.[1][2]

References

1. Yang Enhong. "Johan van Manen: The founder of Tibetology in the Netherlands". International Institute for Asian Studies. Retrieved 24 January 2016.
2. "Mari Albert Johan van Manen". Dutch Studies on South Asia, Tibet and classical Southeast Asia. Archived from the original on 31 January 2016. Retrieved 24 January 2016.

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Walter Evans-Wentz
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/22/20

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Lama Kazi Dawa Samdup and Evans-Wentz, circa 1919

Walter Yeeling Evans-Wentz (February 2, 1878 – July 17, 1965) was an American anthropologist and writer who was a pioneer in the study of Tibetan Buddhism, and in transmission of Tibetan Buddhism to the Western world, most known for publishing an early English translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead in 1927. He translated three other texts from the Tibetan: Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa (1928), Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines (1935), and The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation (1954), and wrote the preface to Paramahansa Yogananda's famous spiritual book, Autobiography of a Yogi (1946).

Early life and background

Walter Yeeling Wentz was born in Trenton, New Jersey in 1878. His father Christopher Wentz (1836 - February 4, 1921) -- born in Weissengen, Baden, Germany -- had emigrated to America with his parents in 1846.[1] At the turn of the century (1900) Christopher was a real estate developer in Pablo Beach, Florida. Walter's mother (and Christopher's 1st wife) -- Mary Evans Cook (died 1898) -- was of Irish heritage. Christopher and Mary were married on August 11, 1862 in Trenton, Mercer County, New Jersey. Christopher's 2nd wife (they were married on June 4, 1900 in Duval County, Florida) was Olivia F. Bradford (1863-1949). Walter had two brothers and two sisters.[2] Though initially a Baptist, Walter's father had turned to spiritualism and Theosophy.[3] As a teenager, Walter read Madame Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine in his father's library, and became interested in the teachings of Theosophy and the occult.[4] Subsequently, at the turn of century, Walter moved to San Diego, California to join his father's profession, but also because it was close to Lomaland, the American headquarters for the Theosophical Society,[2] which he joined in 1901.[5]

At age 24 Evans-Wentz went to Stanford University, where he studied religion, philosophy, and history and was deeply influenced by visitors William James and W. B. Yeats.[3] He went on to receive B.A. and M.A degrees.[2] He then studied Celtic mythology and folklore at Jesus College, Oxford[6] (1907). He performed ethnographic fieldwork collecting fairy folklore in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, Brittany, and the Isle of Man. In 1911 Evans-Wentz published his degree thesis as a book, The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries.[2][7] While at Oxford, he added his mother's Welsh surname Evans to his name, being known henceforth as Evans-Wentz.[5]

Career

At Oxford, Evans-Wentz met archaeologist and British Army officer T.E. Lawrence [Lawrence of Arabia], who advised him to travel to the Orient.[3]

Thereafter, funded by his rental properties in Florida,[5] he started travelling extensively, spending time in Mexico, Europe, and the Far East. He spent the years of the First World War in Egypt. He boarded a ship from Port Said, Egypt for Colombo, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon).[8] Here he started studying the history, customs and religious traditions of the country,[8] and also collected a large number of important Pali manuscripts, which were later donated to Stanford University. Next in 1918, he travelled across India, covering important religious sites, "seeking wise men of the east". He met spiritual figures like Yogananda, J. Krishnamurti, Paul Brunton, Ramana Maharishi, Sri Krishna Prem and Shunyata. He also visited the Theosophical Society Adyar, where he met Annie Besant and Swami Shyamananda Giri (1911-1971).[9][5]

Finally he reached Darjeeling in 1919;[8] there he encountered Tibetan religious texts firsthand, when he acquired a Tibetan manuscript of Karma Lingpa's Liberation through Hearing during the Intermediate State (or Bardo Thodol) from Major Campbell, a British officer who had just returned from Tibet. He next met Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup (1868–1922), an English teacher and headmaster at Maharaja's Boys School, in Gangtok, Sikkim. Samdup had been with 13th Dalai Lama during the latter's exile years in India in 1910; more importantly for Evans-Wentz, he had already worked as a translator with Alexandra David-Néel, the Belgian-French explorer, travel writer, and Buddhist convert, and Sir John Woodroffe, noted British Orientalist.[5][8]

For the next two months, Evans-Wentz spent morning hours before the opening of the school with Samdup working on the text. During this period, they worked out the origins of what was to become The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Evans-Wentz soon left for the Swami Satyananda's ashram, where he was practicing yoga. Samdup meanwhile was appointed as a lecturer at the University of Calcutta, in the same year, and died in Calcutta three years later, long before the book could be finally published.[10]

In 1927, The Tibetan Book of the Dead was published by Oxford University Press. Evans-Wentz chose the title "Book of the Dead" because it reminded him of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. For Westerners, the book would become a principal reference on Tibetan Buddhism.[3] Evans-Wentz credited himself only as the compiler and editor of these volumes; the actual translation was performed by Tibetan Buddhists, primarily Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup. Evans-Wentz's interpretations and organization of this Tibetan material is hermeneutically controversial, being influenced by preconceptions he brought to the subject from Theosophy and other metaphysical schools.[11]

This book was followed by Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa (1928), also based on Samdup's translations. Evans-Wentz was a practitioner of the religions he studied. He became Dawa-Samdup's "disciple" (E-W's term), wore robes, and ate a simple vegetarian diet.[12] In 1935, he met Ramana Maharshi and went to Darjeeling, where he employed three translators, Sikkimese of Tibetan descent, to translate another text which was published as Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines (1935).[13]

Evans-Wentz intended to settle permanently in India, but was compelled by World War II to return to the U.S. There he would publish The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation in 1954. A final work, Cuchama and Sacred Mountains (1989), was published posthumously.

In 1946, he wrote the preface to Yogananda's well known Autobiography of a Yogi, that introduced both Yogananda and himself to wider audiences in a book which has been in print for over sixty-five years and translated into at least thirty-four languages. He mentions having personally met Yogananda's guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri, at his ashram in Puri and noted positive impressions of him. Evans-Wentz remains best known his lasting legacy to Tibetology.[3][14]

Later years and death

Evans-Wentz remained a Theosophist for the rest of his life, writing articles for Theosophical publications and provided financial support to the Maha Bodhi Society, Self-Realization Fellowship, and the Theosophical Society.[13] He lived for 23 years at the Keystone Hotel in San Diego.[13][15] Evans-Wentz spent his last months at Yogananda's Self-Realization Fellowship in Encinitas, California[13] and died on July 17, 1965. His Tibetan Book of the Dead was read at his funeral.[16]

Legacy

The Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University has hosted "The Evans-Wentz Lectureship in Asian Philosophy, Religion, and Ethics" since 1969, funded by a bequest from Evans-Wentz.[17][dead link]

Partial bibliography

• The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, London, New York, H. Frowde, 1911.[18]
• M. J. LeGoc (1921). The Doctrine of Rebirth and Dr. Evans-Wentz: A Public Lecture Delivered Under the Auspices of the Catholic Union of Ceylon. Messenger Press.
• The Tibetan Book of the Dead; or, The After-Death Experiences on the Bardo Plane, According to Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup's English Rendering, with foreword by Sir John Woodroffe, London, Oxford University Press, H. Milford, 1927.
• Tibetan Yoga And Secret Doctrines; or, Seven Books of Wisdom of the Great Path, According to the Late Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup's English Rendering; Arranged and Edited with Introductions and Annotations to serve as a Commentary, London, Oxford University Press, H. Milford, 1935.
• Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa: a Biography from the Tibetan; Being the Jetsün-Kahbum or Biographical History of Jetsün-Milarepa, According to the Late Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup's English Tendering (2d ed.), edited with introd. and annotations by W. Y. Evans-Wentz, London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1951.
• The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation; Or, The Method of Realizing Nirvana Through Knowing the Mind Preceded by an Epitome of Padma-Sambhava's Biography and Followed by Guru Phadampa Sangay's Teachings According to English renderings by Sardar Bahädur S. W. Laden La and by the Lāmas Karma Sumdhon Paul, Lobzang Mingyur Dorje, and Kazi Dawa-Samdup. Introductions, annotations, and editing by W. Y. Evans-Wentz. With psychological commentary by C. G. Jung. London, New York, Oxford University Press, 1954.
• Cuchama and Sacred Mountains. Ohio University Press. 1989. ISBN 978-0-8040-0908-9.

See also

• Tibetan Book of the Dead

Notes

1. https://lamesahistory.com/wp-content/up ... 2_2001.pdf - "Wentz-Park House Landmarked, A Designated Historic Site" in Lookout Avenue, Volume 22, Number 2 (Autumn 2001), p. 6 (La Mesa Historical Society)
2. David Guy. "The Hermit Who Owned His Mountain: A Profile of W.Y. Evans Wentz". Tricycle. Retrieved 2013-08-30.
3. Oldmeadow, p. 135
4. Lopez, p. 49
5. Lopez, p. 52
6. Sutin 2006, pg. 262
7. "Evans-Wentz, W. Y. (Walter Yeeling), 1878-1965:Biographical History". University of Virginia. Retrieved 2013-08-30.
8. Oldmeadow, p. 136
9. Swami Shyamananda Giri (May 4, 1911 - August 28, 1971) - AKA Yogacharya Binay Narayan. His name at birth was Binayendra Narayan Dubey.
10. Lopez, p. 53
11. Donald S. Lopez, Jr. The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Biography, Princeton University Press, 2011.
12. Sutin 2006, pg. 263
13. Lopez, p. 54
14. 'Walter Evans-Wentz' in: Forbes, Andrew ; Henley, David (2013). The Illustrated Tibetan Book of the Dead. Chiang Mai: Cognoscenti Books. B00BCRLONM
15. Oldmeadow, p. 137
16. Sutin 2006, pg. 267
17. "Stanford Evans-Wentz Lectureship". stanford.edu.
18. Available online and downloadable at archive.org.

References

• Winkler, Ken (2013). Pilgrim of the Clear Light: The Biography of Dr. Walter Y. Evans-Wentz, Second Edition (ebook). Bookmango. ASIN B00EYRK898.
• At Bodleian Library, Oxford: Archives Hub: Papers of W. Y. Evans-Wentz
• Lopez, Donald S. (1999). Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-49311-4.
• Oldmeadow, Harry (2004). Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions. World Wisdom, Inc. ISBN 978-0-941532-57-0.
• McGuire, William (2003) "Jung, Evans-Wentz and various other gurus", in: Journal of Analytical Psychology; 48 (4), 433–445. doi:10.1111/1465-5922.00406
• Sutin, Lawrence (2006) All is Change: the two-thousand-year journey of Buddhism to the West Little, Brown and Co. ISBN 0-316-74156-6
• In the Online Archive of California: Guide to the Walter Y. Evans-Wentz Collection SC0821

External links

• Walter Yeeling Evans-Wentz Papers, 1894-1961(5 linear ft.), Walter Y. Evans-Wentz collection, 1894-1993 (.5 linear ft.) and Ed Reither collection of W. Y. (Walter Yeeling) Evans-Wentz correspondence and ephemera, 1935-1960 (.5 linear ft.), among related collections are housed in the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at Stanford University Libraries
• W.Y.Evans-Wentz papers (English) are also housed at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, see [1]
• Evans-Wentz's Tibetan manuscripts are in the Bodleian Oriental Special Collections of manuscripts, see the Tibetan catalogue: [2] (search for "Evans-Wentz")
• Works by Walter Evans-Wentz at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Walter Evans-Wentz at Internet Archive

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Part 1 of 2

Thomas Edward Lawrence [T. E. Shaw] [John Hume Ross] [Lawrence of Arabia]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/22/20

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

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T. E. Lawrence
Lawrence in 1918
Birth name: Thomas Edward Lawrence
Other name(s): T. E. Shaw, John Hume Ross
Nickname(s): Lawrence of Arabia
Born: 16 August 1888, Tremadog, Carnarvonshire, Wales
Died: 19 May 1935 (aged 46), Bovington Camp, Dorset, England
Buried: St Nicholas, Moreton, Dorset
Allegiance: United Kingdom
Kingdom of Hejaz
Service/branch British Army: Royal Air Force
Years of service: 1914–1918; 1923–1935
Rank: Colonel (British Army); Aircraftman (RAF)
Battles/wars: First World War; Arab Revolt; Siege of Medina; Battle of Aqaba; Capture of Damascus; Battle of Megiddo
Awards: Companion of the Order of the Bath[1]
Distinguished Service Order[2]: Knight of the Legion of Honour (France)[3]; Croix de guerre (France)[4]

Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, CB, DSO (16 August 1888 – 19 May 1935), was a British archaeologist, army officer, diplomat, and writer. He was renowned for his role in the Arab Revolt and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and his ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia, a title used for the 1962 film based on his wartime activities.

He was born out of wedlock in August 1888 to Sarah Junner, a governess, and Thomas Chapman, an Anglo-Irish nobleman. Chapman left his wife and family in Ireland to cohabit with Junner. Chapman and Junner called themselves Mr and Mrs Lawrence, the surname of Sarah's likely father; her mother had been employed as a servant for a Lawrence family when she became pregnant with Sarah.[5] In 1896, the Lawrences moved to Oxford, where Thomas attended the High School and then studied history at Jesus College from 1907 to 1910. Between 1910 and 1914, he worked as an archaeologist for the British Museum, chiefly at Carchemish in Ottoman Syria.

Soon after the outbreak of war, he volunteered for the British Army and was stationed in Egypt. In 1916, he was sent to Arabia on an intelligence mission and quickly became involved with the Arab Revolt as a liaison to the Arab forces, along with other British officers. He worked closely with Emir Faisal, a leader of the revolt, and he participated, sometimes as leader, in military actions against the Ottoman armed forces, culminating in the capture of Damascus in October 1918.

After the war, Lawrence joined the Foreign Office, working with the British government and with Faisal. In 1922 he retreated from public life and spent the years until 1935 serving as an enlisted man, mostly in the Royal Air Force, with a brief period in the Army. During this time, he published his best-known work Seven Pillars of Wisdom, an autobiographical account of his participation in the Arab Revolt. He also translated books into English and wrote The Mint, which detailed his time in the Royal Air Force working as an ordinary aircraftman. He corresponded extensively and was friendly with well-known artists, writers, and politicians. For the RAF, he participated in the development of rescue motorboats.

Lawrence's public image resulted in part from the sensationalised reporting of the Arab revolt by American journalist Lowell Thomas, as well as from Seven Pillars of Wisdom. In 1935, Lawrence was fatally injured in a motorcycle accident in Dorset.

Early life


Lawrence's birthplace, Gorphwysfa, Tremadog, Carnarvonshire, Wales

Thomas Edward Lawrence was born on 16 August 1888 in Tremadog, Carnarvonshire,[6] Wales, in a house named Gorphwysfa, now known as Snowdon Lodge.[7][8][9] His Anglo-Irish father Thomas Chapman had left his wife Edith after he had a son with Sarah Junner who had been governess to his daughters.[10] Sarah had herself been an illegitimate child, having been born in Sunderland as the daughter of Elizabeth Junner, a servant in the Lawrence household; she was dismissed four months before Sarah was born, and identified Sarah's father as "John Junner, Shipwright journeyman".[11][12]


The Lawrence family lived at 2, Polstead Road, Oxford from 1896 to 1921

Lawrence's parents did not marry but lived together under the name Lawrence. In 1914, his father inherited the Chapman baronetcy based at Killua Castle, the ancestral family home in County Westmeath, Ireland, but his parents moved to live in England.[13][14] They had five sons, Thomas (called "Ned" by his immediate family) being the second eldest. From Wales, the family moved to Kirkcudbright, Galloway, in southwestern Scotland, where their son William George was born, then to Dinard in Brittany, then to Jersey.[15]

The family lived at Langley Lodge (now demolished) from 1894 to 1896, set in private woods between the eastern borders of the New Forest and Southampton Water in Hampshire.[16] The residence was isolated, and young Lawrence had many opportunities for outdoor activities and waterfront visits.[17] Victorian-Edwardian Britain was a very conservative society where the majority of people were Christians who considered premarital and extramarital sex to be shameful, and children born out of wedlock were born in disgrace.[18] Lawrence was always something of an outsider, a bastard who could never hope to achieve the same level of social acceptance and success that others could expect who were born legitimate, and no girl from a respectable family would ever marry a bastard.[18]


Lawrence memorial plaque at City of Oxford High School for Boys

In the summer of 1896, the family moved to 2, Polstead Road in Oxford,[19] where they lived until 1921. Lawrence attended the City of Oxford High School for Boys from 1896 until 1907,[20] where one of the four houses was later named "Lawrence" in his honour; the school closed in 1966.[21] Lawrence and one of his brothers became commissioned officers in the Church Lads' Brigade at St Aldate's Church.[22]

Lawrence claimed that he ran away from home around 1905 and served for a few weeks as a boy soldier with the Royal Garrison Artillery at St Mawes Castle in Cornwall, from which he was bought out. However, no evidence of this appears in army records.[23][24]

Travels, antiquities, and archaeology


Leonard Woolley (left) and Lawrence in their excavation house at Carchemish, c. 1912

At age 15, Lawrence and his schoolfriend Cyril Beeson cycled around Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Oxfordshire, visiting almost every village's parish church, studying their monuments and antiquities, and making rubbings of their monumental brasses.[25] Lawrence and Beeson monitored building sites in Oxford and presented the Ashmolean Museum with anything that they found.[25] The Ashmolean's Annual Report for 1906 said that the two teenage boys "by incessant watchfulness secured everything of antiquarian value which has been found."[25] In the summers of 1906 and 1907, Lawrence toured France by bicycle, sometimes with Beeson, collecting photographs, drawings, and measurements of medieval castles.[25] In August 1907, Lawrence wrote home: "The Chaignons & the Lamballe people complimented me on my wonderful French: I have been asked twice since I arrived what part of France I came from".[26]


Lawrence and Woolley (right) at Carchemish, spring 1913

From 1907 to 1910, Lawrence read history at Jesus College, Oxford.[27] In July and August 1908 he cycled 2,200 miles (3,500 km) solo through France to the Mediterranean and back researching French castles.[28][29] In the summer of 1909, he set out alone on a three-month walking tour of crusader castles in Ottoman Syria, during which he travelled 1,000 mi (1,600 km) on foot.[30] He graduated with First Class Honours[31] after submitting a thesis titled The Influence of the Crusades on European Military Architecture—to the End of the 12th Century, partly based on his field research with Beeson in France,[25] and his solo research in France and the Middle East.[32] Lawrence was fascinated by the Middle Ages; his brother Arnold wrote in 1937 that "medieval researches" were a "dream way of escape from bourgeois England".[33]

In 1910, Lawrence was offered the opportunity to become a practising archaeologist at Carchemish, in the expedition that D. G. Hogarth was setting up on behalf of the British Museum.[34] Hogarth arranged a "Senior Demyship" (a form of scholarship) for Lawrence at Magdalen College, Oxford, to fund his work at £100 a year.[35] He sailed for Beirut in December 1910 and went to Byblos, where he studied Arabic.[36] He then went to work on the excavations at Carchemish, near Jerablus in northern Syria, where he worked under Hogarth, R. Campbell Thompson of the British Museum, and Leonard Woolley until 1914.[37] He later stated that everything which he had accomplished he owed to Hogarth.[38] Lawrence met Gertrude Bell while excavating at Carchemish.[39] He worked briefly with Flinders Petrie in 1912 at Kafr Ammar in Egypt.[40]

Military intelligence


Early Hittite artifact found by T. E. Lawrence and Leonard Woolley (right) in Carchemish.

In January 1914, Woolley and Lawrence were co-opted by the British military[41] as an archaeological smokescreen for a British military survey of the Negev Desert. They were funded by the Palestine Exploration Fund to search for an area referred to in the Bible as the Wilderness of Zin, and they made an archaeological survey of the Negev Desert along the way. The Negev was strategically important, as an Ottoman army attacking Egypt would have to cross it. Woolley and Lawrence subsequently published a report of the expedition's archaeological findings,[42] but a more important result was updated mapping of the area, with special attention to features of military relevance such as water sources. Lawrence also visited Aqaba and Shobek, not far from Petra.[43]

Following the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, Lawrence did not immediately enlist in the British Army. He held back until October on the advice of S. F. Newcombe, when he was commissioned on the General List.[44] Before the end of the year, he was summoned by renowned archaeologist and historian Lt. Cmdr. David Hogarth, his mentor at Carchemish, to the new Arab Bureau intelligence unit in Cairo, and he arrived in Cairo on 15 December 1914.[45] The Bureau's chief was General Gilbert Clayton who reported to Egyptian High Commissioner Henry McMahon.[46]

The situation was complex during 1915. There was a growing Arab-nationalist movement within the Arabic-speaking Ottoman territories, including many Arabs serving in the Ottoman armed forces.[47] They were in contact with Sharif Hussein, Emir of Mecca,[48] who was negotiating with the British and offering to lead an Arab uprising against the Ottomans. In exchange, he wanted a British guarantee of an independent Arab state including the Hejaz, Syria, and Mesopotamia.[49] Such an uprising would have been very helpful to Britain in its war against the Ottomans, greatly lessening the threat against the Suez Canal. However, there was resistance from French diplomats who insisted that Syria's future was as a French colony, not an independent Arab state.[50] There were also strong objections from the Government of India, which was nominally part of the British government but acted independently. Its vision was of Mesopotamia under British control serving as a granary for India; furthermore, it wanted to hold on to its Arabian outpost in Aden.[51]

At the Arab Bureau, Lawrence supervised the preparation of maps,[52] produced a daily bulletin for the British generals operating in the theatre,[53] and interviewed prisoners.[52] He was an advocate of a British landing at Alexandretta which never came to pass.[54] He was also a consistent advocate of an independent Arab Syria.[55]

The situation came to a crisis in October 1915, as Sharif Hussein demanded an immediate commitment from Britain, with the threat that he would otherwise throw his weight behind the Ottomans.[56] This would create a credible Pan-Islamic message that could have been very dangerous for Britain, which was in severe difficulties in the Gallipoli Campaign. The British replied with a letter from High Commissioner McMahon that was generally agreeable while reserving commitments concerning the Mediterranean coastline and Holy Land.[57]

In the spring of 1916, Lawrence was dispatched to Mesopotamia to assist in relieving the Siege of Kut by some combination of starting an Arab uprising and bribing Ottoman officials. This mission produced no useful result.[58] Meanwhile, the Sykes–Picot Agreement was being negotiated in London without the knowledge of British officials in Cairo, which awarded a large proportion of Syria to France. Further, it implied that the Arabs would have to conquer Syria's four great cities if they were to have any sort of state there: Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo. It is unclear at what point Lawrence became aware of the treaty's contents.[59]

Arab Revolt

Main article: Arab Revolt


Lawrence at Rabigh, north of Jeddah, 1917

The Arab Revolt began in June 1916, but it bogged down after a few successes, with a real risk that the Ottoman forces would advance along the coast of the Red Sea and recapture Mecca.[60] On 16 October 1916, Lawrence was sent to the Hejaz on an intelligence-gathering mission led by Ronald Storrs.[61] He interviewed Sharif Hussein's sons Ali, Abdullah, and Faisal,[62] and he concluded that Faisal was the best candidate to lead the Revolt.[63]

In November, S. F. Newcombe was assigned to lead a permanent British liaison to Faisal's staff.[64] Newcombe had not yet arrived in the area and the matter was of some urgency, so Lawrence was sent in his place.[65] In late December 1916, Faisal and Lawrence worked out a plan for repositioning the Arab forces to prevent the Ottoman forces around Medina from threatening Arab positions and putting the railway from Syria under threat.[66] Newcombe arrived and Lawrence was preparing to leave Arabia, but Faisal intervened urgently, asking that Lawrence's assignment become permanent.[67]

Lawrence's most important contributions to the Arab Revolt were in the area of strategy and liaison with British armed forces, but he also participated personally in several military engagements:

• 3 January 1917: Attack on an Ottoman outpost in the Hejaz[68]
• 26 March 1917: Attack on the railway at Aba el Naam[69][70]
• 11 June 1917: Attack on a bridge at Ras Baalbek[71]
• 2 July 1917: Defeat of the Ottoman forces at Aba el Lissan, an outpost of Aqaba[72]
• 18 September 1917: Attack on the railway near Mudawara[73]
• 27 September 1917: Attack on the railway, destroyed an engine[74]
• 7 November 1917: Following a failed attack on the Yarmuk bridges, blew up a train on the railway between Dera'a and Amman, suffering several wounds in the explosion and ensuing combat[75]
• 23 January 1918: The battle of Tafileh, a region southeast of the Dead Sea, with Arab regulars under the command of Jafar Pasha al-Askari;[76] the battle was a defensive engagement that turned into an offensive rout[77] and was described in the official history of the war as a "brilliant feat of arms".[76] Lawrence was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his leadership at Tafileh and was promoted to lieutenant colonel.[76]
• March 1918: Attack on the railway near Aqaba[78]
• 19 April 1918: Attack using British armoured cars on Tell Shahm[79]
• 16 September 1918: Destruction of railway bridge between Amman and Dera'a[80]
• 26 September 1918: Attack on retreating Ottomans and Germans near the village of Tafas; the Ottoman forces massacred the villagers and then Arab forces in return massacred their prisoners with Lawrence's encouragement.[81]

Lawrence made a 300-mile personal journey northward in June 1917, on the way to Aqaba, visiting Ras Baalbek, the outskirts of Damascus, and Azraq, Jordan. He met Arab nationalists, counselling them to avoid revolt until the arrival of Faisal's forces, and he attacked a bridge to create the impression of guerrilla activity. His findings were regarded by the British as extremely valuable and there was serious consideration of awarding him a Victoria Cross; in the end, he was invested as a Companion of the Order of the Bath and promoted to Major.[82]

Lawrence travelled regularly between British headquarters and Faisal, co-ordinating military action.[83] But by early 1918, Faisal's chief British liaison was Colonel Pierce Charles Joyce, and Lawrence's time was chiefly devoted to raiding and intelligence-gathering.[84]

Strategy

The chief elements of the Arab strategy which Faisal and Lawrence developed were to avoid capturing Medina, and to extend northwards through Maan and Dera'a to Damascus and beyond. Faisal wanted to lead regular attacks against the Ottomans, but Lawrence persuaded him to drop that tactic.[85] Lawrence wrote about the Bedouin as a fighting force:

The value of the tribes is defensive only and their real sphere is guerilla warfare. They are intelligent, and very lively, almost reckless, but too individualistic to endure commands, or fight in line, or to help each other. It would, I think, be possible to make an organized force out of them.… The Hejaz war is one of dervishes against regular forces—and we are on the side of the dervishes. Our text-books do not apply to its conditions at all.[85]

Medina was an attractive target for the revolt as Islam's second holiest site, and because its Ottoman garrison was weakened by disease and isolation.[86] It became clear that it was advantageous to leave it there rather than try to capture it, while continually attacking the Hejaz railway south from Damascus without permanently destroying it.[87] This prevented the Ottomans from making effective use of their troops at Medina, and forced them to dedicate many resources to defending and repairing the railway line.[88][89][87]

It is not known when Lawrence learned the details of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, nor if or when he briefed Faisal on what he knew,[90][91] However, there is good reason to think that both these things happened, and earlier rather than later. In particular, the Arab strategy of northward extension makes perfect sense given the Sykes-Picot language that spoke of an independent Arab entity in Syria, which would only be granted if the Arabs liberated the territory themselves. The French, and some of their British Liaison officers, were specifically uncomfortable about the northward movement, as it would weaken French colonial claims.[92][93]

Capture of Aqaba

Main article: Battle of Aqaba


Lawrence at Aqaba, 1917

In 1917, Lawrence proposed a joint action with the Arab irregulars and forces including Auda Abu Tayi, who had previously been in the employ of the Ottomans, against the strategically located but lightly defended[94][95][96] town of Aqaba on the Red Sea. Aqaba could have been attacked from the sea, but the narrow defiles leading through the mountains were strongly defended and would have been very difficult to assault.[97] The expedition was led by Sharif Nasir of Medina.[98]

Lawrence carefully avoided informing his British superiors about the details of the planned inland attack, due to concern that it would be blocked as contrary to French interests.[99] The expedition departed from Wejh on 9 May.[100] and Aqaba fell to the Arab forces on 6 July, after a surprise overland attack which took the Turkish defences from behind. After Aqaba, General Sir Edmund Allenby, the new commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, agreed to Lawrence's strategy for the revolt. Lawrence now held a powerful position as an adviser to Faisal and a person who had Allenby's confidence, as Allenby acknowledged after the war:

I gave him a free hand. His cooperation was marked by the utmost loyalty, and I never had anything but praise for his work, which, indeed, was invaluable throughout the campaign. He was the mainspring of the Arab movement and knew their language, their manners and their mentality.[101]

Dera'a

Lawrence describes an episode on 20 November 1917 while reconnoitering Dera'a in disguise, when he was captured by the Ottoman military, heavily beaten, and sexually abused by the local bey and his guardsmen,[102] though he does not specify the nature of the sexual contact. Some scholars have stated that he exaggerated the severity of the injuries that he suffered,[103] or alleged that the episode never actually happened.[104][105] There is no independent testimony, but the multiple consistent reports and the absence of evidence for outright invention in Lawrence's works make the account believable to his biographers.[106] Malcolm Brown, John E. Mack, and Jeremy Wilson have argued that this episode had strong psychological effects on Lawrence, which may explain some of his unconventional behaviour in later life. Lawrence ended his account of the episode in Seven Pillars of Wisdom with the statement: "In Dera'a that night the citadel of my integrity had been irrevocably lost."[107]

Fall of Damascus


Lawrence in 1919

Lawrence was involved in the build-up to the capture of Damascus in the final weeks of the war, but he was not present at the city's formal surrender, much to his disappointment. He arrived several hours after the city had fallen, entering Damascus around 9 am on 1 October 1918; the first to arrive was the 10th Australian Light Horse Brigade led by Major A. C. N. "Harry" Olden, who formally accepted the surrender of the city from acting Governor Emir Said.[108] Lawrence was instrumental in establishing a provisional Arab government under Faisal in newly liberated Damascus, which he had envisioned as the capital of an Arab state. Faisal's rule as king, however, came to an abrupt end in 1920, after the battle of Maysaloun when the French Forces of General Gouraud entered Damascus under the command of General Mariano Goybet, destroying Lawrence's dream of an independent Arabia.[109]

During the closing years of the war, Lawrence sought to convince his superiors in the British government that Arab independence was in their interests, but he met with mixed success. The secret Sykes-Picot Agreement between France and Britain contradicted the promises of independence that he had made to the Arabs and frustrated his work.[110]

Post-war years

Lawrence returned to the United Kingdom a full colonel.[111] Immediately after the war, he worked for the Foreign Office, attending the Paris Peace Conference between January and May as a member of Faisal's delegation. On 17 May 1919, a Handley Page Type O/400 taking Lawrence to Egypt crashed at the airport of Roma-Centocelle. The pilot and co-pilot were killed; Lawrence survived with a broken shoulder blade and two broken ribs.[112] During his brief hospitalisation, he was visited by King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy.[113]


Map presented by Lawrence to the Eastern Committee of the War Cabinet in November 1918[114]


Emir Faisal's party at Versailles, during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919; left to right: Rustum Haidar, Nuri al-Said, Prince Faisal (front), Captain Pisani (rear), Lawrence, Faisal's servant (name unknown), Captain Hassan Khadri

In 1918, Lowell Thomas went to Jerusalem where he met Lawrence, "whose enigmatic figure in Arab uniform fired his imagination", in the words of author Rex Hall.[115] Thomas and his cameraman Harry Chase shot a great deal of film and many photographs involving Lawrence. Thomas produced a stage presentation entitled With Allenby in Palestine which included a lecture, dancing, and music[116] and engaged in "Orientalism", depicting the Middle East as exotic, mysterious, sensuous, and violent.[116] The show premiered in New York in March 1919.[117] He was invited to take his show to England, and he agreed to do so provided that he was personally invited by the King and provided the use of either Drury Lane or Covent Garden. He opened at Covent Garden on 14 August 1919 and continued for hundreds of lectures, "attended by the highest in the land".[115][118]

Initially, Lawrence played only a supporting role in the show, as the main focus was on Allenby's campaigns; but then Thomas realised that it was the photos of Lawrence dressed as a Bedouin which had captured the public's imagination, so he had Lawrence photographed again in London in Arab dress.[116] With the new photos, Thomas re-launched his show under the new title With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia in early 1920, which proved to be extremely popular.[116] The new title elevated Lawrence from a supporting role to a co-star of the Near Eastern campaign and reflected a changed emphasis. Thomas' shows made the previously obscure Lawrence into a household name.[116]

Lawrence worked with Thomas on the creation of the presentation, answering many questions and posing for many photographs.[119]. After its success, however, he expressed regret about having been featured in it.[120]

Lawrence served as an advisor to Winston Churchill at the Colonial Office for just over a year starting in February 1920.[121] He hated bureaucratic work, writing on 21 May 1921 to Robert Graves: "I wish I hadn't gone out there: the Arabs are like a page I have turned over; and sequels are rotten things. I'm locked up here: office every day and much of it".[122] He travelled to the Middle East on multiple occasions during this period, at one time holding the title of "chief political officer for Trans-Jordania".[123]

He campaigned actively for his and Churchill's vision of the Middle East, publishing pieces in multiple newspapers, including the Times, The Observer, The Daily Mail, and The Daily Express.[124]

Lawrence had a sinister reputation in France during his lifetime and even today as an implacable "enemy of France", the man who was constantly stirring up the Syrians to rebel against French rule throughout the 1920s.[125] However, French historian Maurice Larès wrote that the real reason for France's problems in Syria was that the Syrians did not want to be ruled by France, and the French needed a "scapegoat" to blame for their difficulties in ruling the country.[126] Larès wrote that Lawrence is usually pictured in France as a Francophobe, but he was really a Francophile.[126]


Lawrence, Emir Abdullah, Air Marshal Sir Geoffrey Salmond, Sir Wyndham Deedes, and others in Jerusalem

In August 1922, Lawrence enlisted in the Royal Air Force as an aircraftman, under the name John Hume Ross. At the RAF recruiting centre in Covent Garden, London, he was interviewed by recruiting officer Flying Officer W. E. Johns, later known as the author of the Biggles series of novels.[127] Johns rejected Lawrence's application, as he suspected that "Ross" was a false name. Lawrence admitted that this was so and that he had provided false documents. He left, but returned some time later with an RAF messenger who carried a written order that Johns must accept Lawrence.[128]

However, Lawrence was forced out of the RAF in February 1923 after his identity was exposed. He changed his name to T. E. Shaw (apparently as a consequence of his friendship with G. B. and Charlotte Shaw[129]) and joined the Royal Tank Corps later that year. He was unhappy there and repeatedly petitioned to rejoin the RAF, which finally readmitted him in August 1925.[130] A fresh burst of publicity after the publication of Revolt in the Desert resulted in his assignment to bases at Karachi and Miramshah in British India (now Pakistan) in late 1926,[131][132] where he remained until the end of 1928. At that time, he was forced to return to Britain after rumours began to circulate that he was involved in espionage activities.[133]

He purchased several small plots of land in Chingford, built a hut and swimming pool there, and visited frequently. The hut was removed in 1930 when Chingford Urban District Council acquired the land; it was given to the City of London Corporation which re-erected it in the grounds of The Warren, Loughton. Lawrence's tenure of the Chingford land has now been commemorated by a plaque fixed on the sighting obelisk on Pole Hill.[134]


Lawrence on the Brough Superior SS100 that he called "George V"

Lawrence continued serving in the RAF based at RAF Mount Batten near Plymouth, RAF Calshot near Southampton, and RAF Bridlington, East Riding of Yorkshire. He specialised in high-speed boats and professed happiness, and he left the service with considerable regret at the end of his enlistment in March 1935.[135]

In late August or early September 1931 he stayed with Lady Houston aboard her luxury yacht, the Liberty, off Calshot, shortly before the Schneider Trophy competition.[136] In later letters Lady Houston would ask Lawrence's advice on obtaining a new chauffeur for her Rolls Royce car ('Forgive my asking, but you know everything')[136] and suggest that he join the Liberty, for she had discharged her captain, who had turned out to be a 'wrong 'un.'[136]

In the inter-war period, the RAF's Marine Craft Section began to commission air-sea rescue launches capable of higher speeds and greater capacity. The arrival of high-speed craft into the MCS was driven in part by Lawrence. He had previously witnessed a seaplane crew drowning when the seaplane tender sent to their rescue was too slow in arriving. He worked with Hubert Scott-Paine, the founder of the British Power Boat Company (BPBC), to introduce the 37.5 ft (11.4 m) long ST 200 Seaplane Tender Mk1 into service. These boats had a range of 140 miles when cruising at 24 knots and could achieve a top speed of 29 knots.[137][138]

Lawrence was a keen motorcyclist and owned eight Brough Superior motorcycles at different times.[139][140] His last SS100 (Registration GW 2275) is privately owned but has been on loan to the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu[141] and the Imperial War Museum in London.[142] He was also an avid reader of Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur and carried a copy on his campaigns. He read an account of Eugene Vinaver's discovery of the Winchester Manuscript of the Morte in The Times in 1934, and he motorcycled from Manchester to Winchester to meet Vinaver.[143]

Death


Lawrence's last Brough Superior SS100 while on loan to the Imperial War Museum, London


Memorial near the crash site which is found south of his cottage at Clouds Hill, Wareham, Dorset

Lawrence was fatally injured in an accident on his Brough Superior SS100 motorcycle in Dorset close to his cottage Clouds Hill, near Wareham, just two months after leaving military service. He was 46. A dip in the road obstructed his view of two boys on their bicycles; he swerved to avoid them, lost control, and was thrown over the handlebars.[144] He died six days later on 19 May 1935.[144] The location of the crash is marked by a small memorial at the roadside.[145]

One of the doctors attending him was neurosurgeon Hugh Cairns, who consequently began a long study of the loss of life by motorcycle dispatch riders through head injuries. His research led to the use of crash helmets by both military and civilian motorcyclists.[146]

The Moreton estate borders Bovington Camp, and Lawrence bought it from his cousins the Frampton family. He had been a frequent visitor to their home Okers Wood House, and had corresponded with Louisa Frampton for years. Lawrence's mother arranged with the Framptons to have his body buried in their family plot in the separate burial ground of St Nicholas' Church, Moreton.[147][148] The coffin was transported on the Frampton estate's bier. Mourners included Winston Churchill, E. M. Forster, Lady Astor, and Lawrence's youngest brother Arnold.[149]


Lawrence's grave is in the separate churchyard of St Nicholas' Church, Moreton. Dominus illuminatio mea, from Psalm 27, is the motto of the University of Oxford; it translates as "The Lord is my light." The verse on the headstone is John 5:25.

Writings

Lawrence was a prolific writer throughout his life, a large portion of which was epistolary; he often sent several letters a day, and several collections of his letters have been published. He corresponded with many notable figures, including George Bernard Shaw, Edward Elgar, Winston Churchill, Robert Graves, Noël Coward, E. M. Forster, Siegfried Sassoon, John Buchan, Augustus John, and Henry Williamson. He met Joseph Conrad and commented perceptively on his works. The many letters that he sent to Shaw's wife Charlotte are revealing as to his character.[150]

Lawrence was a competent speaker of French and Arabic, and reader of Latin and Ancient Greek.[151]

Lawrence published three major texts in his lifetime. The most significant was his account of the Arab Revolt in Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Homer's Odyssey and The Forest Giant were translations, the latter an otherwise forgotten work of French fiction. He received a flat fee for the second translation, and negotiated a generous fee plus royalties for the first.[152]

Further information: English translations of Homer § Lawrence

Seven Pillars of Wisdom


14 Barton Street, London SW1, where Lawrence lived while writing Seven Pillars

Main article: Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Lawrence's major work is Seven Pillars of Wisdom, an account of his war experiences. In 1919, he was elected to a seven-year research fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, providing him with support while he worked on the book. Certain parts of the book also serve as essays on military strategy, Arabian culture and geography, and other topics. He rewrote Seven Pillars of Wisdom three times, once "blind" after he lost the manuscript while changing trains at Reading railway station.[153]

There are many alleged "embellishments" in Seven Pillars, though some allegations have been disproved with time, most definitively in Jeremy Wilson's authorised biography. However, Lawrence's own notebooks refute his claim to have crossed the Sinai Peninsula from Aqaba to the Suez Canal in just 49 hours without any sleep. In reality, this famous camel ride lasted for more than 70 hours and was interrupted by two long breaks for sleeping, which Lawrence omitted when he wrote his book.[154]

In the preface, Lawrence acknowledged George Bernard Shaw's help in editing the book. The first edition was published in 1926 as a high-priced private subscription edition, printed in London by Herbert John Hodgson and Roy Manning Pike, with illustrations by Eric Kennington, Augustus John, Paul Nash, Blair Hughes-Stanton, and Hughes-Stanton's wife Gertrude Hermes. Lawrence was afraid that the public would think that he would make a substantial income from the book, and he stated that it was written as a result of his war service. He vowed not to take any money from it, and indeed he did not, as the sale price was one third of the production costs,[155] leaving him in substantial debt.[156]

Revolt in the Desert


Portrait by Augustus John, 1919. Tate Modern, London

Revolt in the Desert was an abridged version of Seven Pillars that he began in 1926 and that was published in March 1927 in both limited and trade editions.[157] He undertook a needed but reluctant publicity exercise, which resulted in a best-seller. Again he vowed not to take any fees from the publication, partly to appease the subscribers to Seven Pillars who had paid dearly for their editions. By the fourth reprint in 1927, the debt from Seven Pillars was paid off. As Lawrence left for military service in India at the end of 1926, he set up the "Seven Pillars Trust" with his friend D. G. Hogarth as a trustee, in which he made over the copyright and any surplus income of Revolt in the Desert. He later told Hogarth that he had "made the Trust final, to save myself the temptation of reviewing it, if Revolt turned out a best seller."[158]

The resultant trust paid off the debt, and Lawrence then invoked a clause in his publishing contract to halt publication of the abridgment in the United Kingdom. However, he allowed both American editions and translations, which resulted in a substantial flow of income. The trust paid income either into an educational fund for children of RAF officers who lost their lives or were invalided as a result of service, or more substantially into the RAF Benevolent Fund.[159]

Posthumous

Lawrence left The Mint unpublished,[160] a memoir of his experiences as an enlisted man in the Royal Air Force (RAF). For this, he worked from a notebook that he kept while enlisted, writing of the daily lives of enlisted men and his desire to be a part of something larger than himself. The book is stylistically very different from Seven Pillars of Wisdom, using sparse prose as opposed to the complicated syntax found in Seven Pillars. It was published posthumously, edited by his brother Professor A. W. Lawrence.[161]

After Lawrence's death, A. W. Lawrence inherited Lawrence's estate and his copyrights as the sole beneficiary. To pay the inheritance tax, he sold the US copyright of Seven Pillars of Wisdom (subscribers' text) outright to Doubleday Doran in 1935.[162] Doubleday still controls publication rights of this version of the text of Seven Pillars of Wisdom in the US, and will continue to until the copyright expires at the end of 2022 (publication plus 95 years). In 1936, A. W. Lawrence split the remaining assets of the estate, giving Clouds Hill and many copies of less substantial or historical letters to the National Trust, and then set up two trusts to control interests in his brother's residual copyrights.[163] He assigned the copyright in Seven Pillars of Wisdom to the Seven Pillars of Wisdom Trust,[164] and it was given its first general publication as a result. He assigned the copyright in The Mint and all Lawrence's letters to the Letters and Symposium Trust,[162] which he edited and published in the book T. E. Lawrence by his Friends in 1937.[162]

A substantial amount of income went directly to the RAF Benevolent Fund and to archaeological, environmental, and academic projects. The two trusts were amalgamated in 1986, and the unified trust acquired all the remaining rights to Lawrence's works that it had not owned on the death of A. W. Lawrence in 1991, plus rights to all of A. W. Lawrence's works.[163] The UK copyrights on Lawrence's works published in his lifetime and within 20 years of his death expired on 1 January 2006. Works published more than 20 years after his death were protected for 50 years from publication or to 1 January 2040, whichever is earlier.[165]

Writings

• Seven Pillars of Wisdom, an account of Lawrence's part in the Arab Revolt. (ISBN 0-8488-0562-3)
• Revolt in the Desert, an abridged version of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. (ISBN 1-56619-275-7)
• The Mint, an account of Lawrence's service in the Royal Air Force. (ISBN 0-393-00196-2)
• Crusader Castles, Lawrence's Oxford thesis. London: Michael Haag 1986 (ISBN 0-902743-53-8). The first edition was published in London in 1936 by the Golden Cockerel Press, in 2 volumes, limited to 1000 editions.
• The Odyssey of Homer, Lawrence's translation from the Greek, first published in 1932. (ISBN 0-19-506818-1)
• The Forest Giant, by Adrien Le Corbeau, novel, Lawrence's translation from the French, 1924.
• The Letters of T. E. Lawrence, selected and edited by Malcolm Brown. London, J. M Dent. 1988 (ISBN 0-460-04733-7)
• The Letters of T. E. Lawrence, edited by David Garnett. (ISBN 0-88355-856-4)
• T. E. Lawrence. Letters, Jeremy Wilson. (See prospectus)[166]
• Minorities: Good Poems by Small Poets and Small Poems by Good Poets, edited by Jeremy Wilson, 1971. Lawrence's commonplace book includes an introduction by Wilson that explains how the poems comprising the book reflected Lawrence's life and thoughts.
• Guerrilla Warfare, article in the 1929 Encyclopædia Britannica[167]
• The Wilderness of Zin, by C. Leonard Woolley and T. E. Lawrence. London, Harrison and Sons, 1914.[168]

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Part 2 of 2

Sexuality

Lawrence's biographers have discussed his sexuality at considerable length, and this discussion has spilled into the popular press.[169] There is no reliable evidence for consensual sexual intimacy between Lawrence and any person. His friends have expressed the opinion that he was asexual,[170][171] and Lawrence himself specifically denied any personal experience of sex in multiple private letters.[172] There were suggestions that Lawrence had been intimate with Dahoum, who worked with him at a pre-war archaeological dig in Carchemish,[173] and fellow serviceman R. A. M. Guy,[174] but his biographers and contemporaries found them unconvincing.[173][174][175]

The dedication to his book Seven Pillars is a poem titled "To S.A." which opens:

I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
and wrote my will across the sky in stars
To earn you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house,
that your eyes might be shining for me
When we came.

Lawrence was never specific about the identity of "S.A." Many theories argue in favour of individual men or women, and the Arab nation as a whole. The most popular theory is that S.A. represents (at least in part) his companion Selim Ahmed, "Dahoum", who apparently died of typhus before 1918.[176][177][178]

Lawrence lived in a period of strong official opposition to homosexuality, but his writing on the subject was tolerant. He wrote to Charlotte Shaw, "I've seen lots of man-and-man loves: very lovely and fortunate some of them were."[179] He refers to "the openness and honesty of perfect love" on one occasion in Seven Pillars, when discussing relationships between young male fighters in the war.[180] He wrote in Chapter 1 of Seven Pillars:

In horror of such sordid commerce [diseased female prostitutes] our youths began indifferently to slake one another's few needs in their own clean bodies—a cold convenience that, by comparison, seemed sexless and even pure. Later, some began to justify this sterile process, and swore that friends quivering together in the yielding sand with intimate hot limbs in supreme embrace, found there hidden in the darkness a sensual co-efficient of the mental passion which was welding our souls and spirits in one flaming effort [to secure Arab independence]. Several, thirsting to punish appetites they could not wholly prevent, took a savage pride in degrading the body, and offered themselves fiercely in any habit which promised physical pain or filth.[181]

There is considerable evidence that Lawrence was a masochist. He wrote in his description of the Dera'a beating that "a delicious warmth, probably sexual, was swelling through me," and he also included a detailed description of the guards' whip in a style typical of masochists' writing.[182] In later life, Lawrence arranged to pay a military colleague to administer beatings to him,[183] and to be subjected to severe formal tests of fitness and stamina.[184] John Bruce first wrote on this topic, including some other statements that were not credible, but Lawrence's biographers regard the beatings as established fact.[185] French novelist André Malraux admired Lawrence but wrote that he had a "taste for self-humiliation, now by discipline and now by veneration; a horror of respectability; a disgust for possessions".[186]

Psychologist John E. Mack sees a possible connection between Lawrence's masochism and the childhood beatings that he had received from his mother[187] for routine misbehaviours.[188] His brother Arnold thought that the beatings had been given for the purpose of breaking his brother's will.[188] Angus Calder suggested in 1997 that Lawrence's apparent masochism and self-loathing might have stemmed from a sense of guilt over losing his brothers Frank and Will on the Western Front, along with many other school friends, while he survived.[189]

The Aldington Controversy

In 1955 Richard Aldington published Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Enquiry, a sustained attack on Lawrence's character, writing, accomplishments, and truthfulness. Specificaly, Aldington alleges that Lawrence lied and exaggerated continuously, promoted a misguided policy in the Middle East, that his strategy of containing but not capturing Medina was incorrect, and that Seven Pillars of Wisdom was a bad book with few redeeming features. He also revealed Lawrence's illegitimacy and strongly suggested that he was homosexual. For example: "Seven Pillars of Wisdom is rather a work of quasi-fiction than history."[190], and "It was seldom that he reported any fact or episode involving himself without embellishing them and indeed in some cases entirely inventing them."[191]

It is significant that Aldington was a colonialist, arguing that the French colonial administration of Syria (strongly resisted by Lawrence) had benefited that country[192] and that Arabia's peoples were "far enough advanced for some government though not for complete self-government."[193] He was also a Francophile, railing against Lawrence's "Francophobia, a hatred and an envy so irrational, so irresponsible and so unscrupulous that it is fair to say his attitude towards Syria was determined more by hatred of France than by devotion to the 'Arabs' - a convenient propaganda word which grouped many disharmonious and even mutually hostile tribes and peoples."[194]

Prior to the publication of Aldington's book, its contents became known in London's literary community. A group Aldington and some subsequent authors referred to as "The Lawrence Bureau"[195], led by B. H. Liddell Hart[196] tried energetically, starting in 1954, to have the book suppressed.[197] That effort having failed, Liddell Hart prepared and distributed hundreds of copies of Aldington's 'Lawrence': His Charges--and Treatment of the Evidence, a 7-page single-spaced document.[198] This worked: Aldington's book received many extremely negative and even abusive reviews, with strong evidence that some reviewers had read Liddell's rebuttal but not Aldington's book.[199]

Aldington wrote that Lawrence embellished many stories and invented others, and in particular that his claims involving numbers were usually inflated - for example claims of having read 50,000 books in the Oxford Union library, of having blown up 79 bridges, of having had a price of £50,000 on his head, and of having suffered 60 or more injuries. Many of Aldington's specific claims against Lawrence have been accepted by subsequent biographers. In Richard Aldington and Lawrence of Arabia: A Cautionary Tale, Fred D. Crawford writes "Much that shocked in 1955 is now standard knowledge--that TEL was illegitimate, that this profoundly troubled him, that he frequently resented his mother's dominance, that such reminiscences as T.E. Lawrence by His Friends are not reliable, that TEL's leg-pulling and other adolescent traits could be offensive, that TEL took liberties with the truth in his official reports and Seven Pillars, that the significance of his exploits during the Arab Revolt was more political than military, that he contributed to his own myth, that when he vetted the books by Graves and Liddell he let remain much that he knew was untrue, and that his feelings about publicity were ambiguous."[200]

This has not prevented most post-Aldington biographers (including Fred D. Crawford, who studied the Aldington claims intensely) from expressing strong admiration for Lawrence’s military, political, and writing achievements.

Awards and commemorations


Eric Kennington's bust of Lawrence at St Paul's Cathedral


The head of Lawrence's effigy in St Martin's Church, Wareham

Lawrence was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 7 August 1917,[1] appointed a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order on 10 May 1918,[2] awarded the Knight of the Legion of Honour (France) on 30 May 1916[3] and awarded the Croix de guerre (France) on 16 April 1918.[4]

A bronze bust of Lawrence by Eric Kennington was placed in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral, London, on 29 January 1936, alongside the tombs of Britain's greatest military leaders.[201] A recumbent stone effigy by Kennington was installed in St Martin's Church, Wareham, Dorset, in 1939.[202][203]

An English Heritage blue plaque marks Lawrence's childhood home at 2 Polstead Road, Oxford, and another appears on his London home at 14 Barton Street, Westminster.[204][205] Lawrence appears on the album cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles. In 2002, Lawrence was named 53rd in the BBC's list of the 100 Greatest Britons following a UK-wide vote.[206]

In popular culture

Film

·         Alexander Korda bought the film rights to The Seven Pillars in the 1930s. The production was in development, with various actors cast as the lead, such as Leslie Howard.[207]
·         Peter O'Toole was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Lawrence in the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia.[208]
·         Lawrence portrayed by Robert Pattinson in the 2014 biographical drama about Gertrude Bell, Queen of the Desert.[209]
·         Peter O'Toole's portrayal of Lawrence inspired behavioural affectations in the synthetic model called David, portrayed by Michael Fassbender in the 2012 film Prometheus, and in the 2017 sequel Alien: Covenant, part of the Alien franchise.[210]

Literature

·         T.E. Lawrence is a 1980 manga by Tomoko Kousaka, which retells the story of Lawrence and his participation in the Arab Revolt.[211]
·         The T.E. Lawrence Poems was published by Canadian poet Gwendolyn MacEwen in 1982.[212]. The poems rely heavily, and quote directly from, primary material including Seven Pillars and the collected letters.

Television

·         He was portrayed by Judson Scott in the 1982 TV series Voyagers![213]
·         Ralph Fiennes portrayed Lawrence in the 1992 British made-for-TV movie A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia.[214]
·         Joseph A. Bennett and Douglas Henshall portrayed him in the 1992 TV series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.[215]
·         He was also portrayed in a Syrian series, directed by Thaer Mousa, called Lawrence Al Arab. The series consisted of 37 episodes, each between 45 minutes and one hour in length.[216]

Theatre

·         Lawrence was the subject of Terence Rattigan's controversial play Ross, which explored Lawrence's alleged homosexuality. Ross ran in London in 1960–61, starring Alec Guinness, who was an admirer of Lawrence, and Gerald Harper as his blackmailer, Dickinson. The play had originally been written as a screenplay, but the planned film was never made. In January 1986 at the Theatre Royal, Plymouth, on the opening night of the revival of Ross, Marc Sinden, who was playing Dickinson (the man who recognised and blackmailed Lawrence, played by Simon Ward), was introduced to the man on whom the character of Dickinson was based. Sinden asked him why he had blackmailed Ross, and he replied, "Oh, for the money. I was financially embarrassed at the time and needed to get up to London to see a girlfriend. It was never meant to be a big thing, but a good friend of mine was very close to Terence Rattigan and years later, the silly devil told him the story."[217]
·         Alan Bennett's Forty Years On (1968) includes a satire on Lawrence; known as "Tee Hee Lawrence" because of his high-pitched, girlish giggle. "Clad in the magnificent white silk robes of an Arab prince ... he hoped to pass unnoticed through London. Alas he was mistaken."[218]
·         The character of Private Napoleon Meek in George Bernard Shaw's 1931 play Too True to Be Good was inspired by Lawrence. Meek is depicted as thoroughly conversant with the language and lifestyle of the native tribes. He repeatedly enlists with the army, quitting whenever offered a promotion. Lawrence attended a performance of the play's original Worcestershire run, and reportedly signed autographs for patrons attending the show.[219]
·         Lawrence's first year back at Oxford after the War to write was portrayed by Tom Rooney in a play, The Oxford Roof Climbers Rebellion, written by Canadian playwright Stephen Massicotte (premiered Toronto 2006). The play explores Lawrence's reactions to war, and his friendship with Robert Graves. Urban Stages presented the American premiere in New York City in October 2007; Lawrence was portrayed by actor Dylan Chalfy.[220]
·         Lawrence's final years are portrayed in a one-man show by Raymond Sargent, The Warrior and the Poet.[221]
·         His 1922 retreat from public life forms the subject of Howard Brenton's play Lawrence After Arabia, commissioned for a 2016 premiere at the Hampstead Theatre to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the Arab Revolt.[222]
·         A highly fictionalised version of Lawrence featured in the 2016 Swedish-language comedic play Lawrence i Mumiedalen.[223]

See also

·         Hashemite
·         Kingdom of Iraq
·         Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorised Biography of T. E. Lawrence
·         The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones (1992–1993)
·         Suleiman Mousa

References

Citations

1.      "No. 30222". The London Gazette (Supplement). 7 August 1917. p. 8103.
2.       "No. 30681". The London Gazette (Supplement). 10 May 1918. p. 5694.
3.        "No. 29600". The London Gazette. 30 May 1916. p. 5321.
4.       "No. 30638". The London Gazette (Supplement). 16 April 1918. p. 4716.
5.       Benson-Gyles, Dick (2016). The Boy in the Mask: The Hidden World of Lawrence of Arabia. The Lilliput Press.
6.       Aldington, 1955, p. 25.
7.       Alan Axelrod (2009). Little-Known Wars of Great and Lasting Impact. Fair Winds, 2009. p. 237. ISBN 9781616734619. Retrieved 1 May 2011.
8.       David Barnes (2005). The Companion Guide to Wales. Companion Guides, 2005. p. 280. ISBN 9781900639439. Retrieved 1 May 2011.
9.       "Snowdon Lodge". Retrieved 17 April 2017.
10.      Mack, 1976, p. 5.
11.      Aldington, 1955, p. 19.
12.      "T. E. Lawrence Studies". Telstudies.org. 13 May 1935. Retrieved 17 March 2020.
13.      Wilson, 1989, Appendix 1.
14.      Mack, 1976, p. 9.
15.      Mack, 1976, p. 6.
16.      Wilson, 1989, p. 22.
17.      Wilson, 1989, p. 24.
18.     Wilson, Jeremy (2 December 2011). "T. E. Lawrence: from dream to legend". T.E. Lawrence Studies. Retrieved 25 October 2016.
19.      Wilson 1989, p. 24.
20.      Mack, 1976, p. 22.
21.      "Brief history of the City of Oxford High School for Boys, George Street". University of Oxford Faculty of History. Archived from the original on 18 April 2012. Retrieved 25 June 2008.
22.      Aldington, 1955, p. 53.
23.      "T. E. Lawrence Studies". Telawrence.info. Archived from the original on 29 September 2011. Retrieved 9 September 2012.
24.      Wilson, 1989, p. 33, in note 34 Wilson discusses a painting in Lawrence's possession at the time of his death which appears to show him as a boy in RGA uniform.
25.     Beeson, C.F.C.; Simcock, A.V. (1989) [1962]. Clockmaking in Oxfordshire 1400–1850 (3rd ed.). Oxford: Museum of the History of Science. p. 3. ISBN 978-0-903364-06-5.
26.      Larès, Maurice "T.E. Lawrence and France: Friends or Foes?" pages 220–242 from The T.E. Lawrence Puzzle edited by Stephen Tabachnick, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984 page 222.
27.      Wilson, 1989, p. 42.
28.      Wilson, 1989, pp. 45–51.
29.      Penaud, 2007.
30.      Wilson, 1989 pp. 57–61.
31.      Wilson, 1989, p. 67.
32.      Allen, Malcolm Dennis (1 November 2010). The Medievalism of Lawrence of Arabia. Penn State Press, 1991. p. 29. ISBN 978-0271040608. Retrieved 1 May 2011.
33.      Allen, M.D. "Lawrence's Medievalism" pages 53–70 from The T.E. Lawrence Puzzle edited by Stephen Tabachnick, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984 page 53.
34.      Wilson, 1989, p. 70.
35.      Wilson, p. 73.
36.      Wilson, 1989, pp. 76–77.
37.      Wilson, 1989, pp. 76–134.
38.      "T. E. Lawrence letters, 1927". Archived from the original on 11 February 2012.
39.      Wilson, 1989, p. 88.
40.      Wilson, 1989, pp. 99–100.
41.      Wilson, 1989, p. 136. Lawrence wrote to his parents "We are obviously only meant as red herrings to give an archaeological colour to a political job."
42.      "Internet Archive Wayback Machine". 18 October 2006. Archived from the original on 18 October 2006. Retrieved 9 September 2012.
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44.      Korda, 2010, p. 251.
45.      Wilson, 1989, p. 166.
46.      Wilson, 1989, pp. 152, 154.
47.      Wilson, 1989, p. 158.
48.      Wilson, 1989, p. 199.
49.      Wilson, 1989, p. 195.
50.      Wilson, 1989, pp. 169–170.
51.      Wilson, 1989, p. 161.
52.     Wilson, 1989, p. 189.
53.      Wilson, 1989, p. 188.
54.      Wilson, 1989, p. 181.
55.      Wilson, 1989, p. 186.
56.      Wilson, 1989, pp. 211–212.
57.      McMahon, Henry; bin Ali, Hussein (1939), Cmd.5957; Correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon, G.C.M.G., His Majesty's High Commissioner at. Cairo and the Sherif Hussein of Mecca, July, 1915-March, 1916 (with map) (PDF), HMG
58.      Wilson, 1989, pp. 256–276.
59.      Wilson, 1989, p. 313. In note 24, Wilson argues that Lawrence must have known about Sykes-Picot prior to his relationship with Faisal, contrary to a later statement.
60.      Wilson, 1989, p. 300.
61.      Wilson, 1989, p. 302.
62.      Wilson, pp. 307–311.
63.      Wilson, 1989, p. 312.
64.      Wilson, p. 321.
65.      Wilson, 1989, p. 323.
66.      Wilson, 1989, p. 347. Also see note 43, where the origin of the repositioning idea is examined closely.
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84.      Wilson, 1918, p. 479.
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87.       Murphy, David (2008). "The Arab Revolt 1916–1918", London: Osprey, 2008 page 36.
88.      Wilson, 1989, p. 329 describes a very early argument for letting the Ottomans stay in Medina in a November 1916 letter from Clayton.
89.      Wilson, 1989, pp. 383–384 describes Lawrence's arrival at this conclusion. However, Aldington 1955 disagrees strongly with the value of the strategy, p. 178.
90.      Wilson, 1989, pp. 361–362 argues that Lawrence knew the details and briefed Faisal in February 1917.
91.      Wilson, 1989, p. 444. shows Lawrence definitely knew of Sykes-Picot in September 1917.
92.      Wilson, 1989, p. 309.
93.      Wilson, 1989, pp. 390–391.
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97.      Graves, 1934, p. 161. "Akaba was so strongly protected by the hills, elaborately fortified for miles back, that if a landing were attempted from the sea a small Turkish force could hold up a whole Allied division in the defiles."
98.      Wilson, 1989, p. 400.
99.      Wilson, 1989, p. 397.
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123.     Korda, 2010, p. 519.
124.     Korda, 2010, p. 505.
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171.     Knightley and Simpson, 1970, p. 29
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175.     Wilson, 1989, chapter 27.
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179.     Letter to Charlotte Shaw in Mack, 1976, p. 425.
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193.     Aldington, 1955, p. 253.
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Sources

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·         Rosen, Jacob (2011). "The Legacy of Lawrence and the New Arab Awakening" (PDF). Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs. V (3). Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016.
·         Sarindar, François (2011). "La vie rêvée de Lawrence d'Arabie: Qantara". Institut du Monde Arabe (in French). Paris, France (80): 7–9.
·         Sarindar, François (2010). Lawrence d'Arabie. Thomas Edward, cet inconnu. Editions L'Harmattan, collection ″Comprendre le Moyen-Orient″ (Paris), France. ISBN 978-2-296-11677-1.
·         Sattin, Anthony (2014). Young Lawrence: A Portrait of the Legend of a Young Man. John Murray. ISBN 978-1848549128.
·         Simpson, Andrew R.B. (2008). Another Life: Lawrence after Arabia. The History Press. ISBN 978-1-86227-464-8.
·         Stang, ed., Charles M. (2002). The Waking Dream of T. E. Lawrence: Essays on His Life, Literature, and Legacy. Palgrave Macmillan.
·         Stewart, Desmond (1977). T. E. Lawrence. New York, Harper & Row Publishers.
·         Storrs, Ronald (1940). Lawrence of Arabia, Zionism and Palestine.
·         Thomas, Lowell (2014) [1924]. With Lawrence in Arabia. Nabu Press. ISBN 978-1295830251.
·         Wilson, Jeremy (1989). Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorised Biography of T. E. Lawrence. ISBN 978-0-689-11934-7.

External links

·         Works by T. E. (Thomas Edward) Lawrence at Faded Page (Canada)
·         Footage of Lawrence of Arabia with publisher FN Doubleday and at a picnic
·         Lawrence of Arabia: The Battle for the Arab World, directed by James Hawes. PBS Home Video, 21 October 2003. (ASIN B0000BWVND)
·         T. E. Lawrence Studies, maintained by Lawrence's authorised biographer Jeremy Wilson
·         The T. E. Lawrence Society
·         T. E. Lawrence's Original Letters on Palestine Shapell Manuscript Foundation
·         Works by T. E. Lawrence
·         Works by or about T. E. Lawrence at Internet Archive
·         T. E. Lawrence's Collection at The University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Center
·         The Guardian 19 May 1935 – The death of Lawrence of Arabia
·         The Legend of Lawrence of Arabia: The Recalcitrant Hero
·         "Creating History: Lowell Thomas and Lawrence of Arabia" online history exhibit at Clio Visualizing History.
·         T. E. Lawrence: The Enigmatic Lawrence of Arabia article by O'Brien Browne
·         Lawrence of Arabia: True and false (an Arab view) by Lucy Ladikoff
·         Europeana Collections 1914–1918 makes 425,000 World War I items from European libraries available online, including manuscripts, photographs and diaries by or relating to Lawrence
·         T. E. Lawrence's Personal Manuscripts and Letters
·         Newspaper clippings about T. E. Lawrence in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
·         T. E. Lawrence at Find a Grave
 

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Part 1 of 2

Local Agency in Global Movements: Negotiating Forms of Buddhist Cosmopolitanism in the Young Men’s Buddhist Associations of Darjeeling and Kalimpong [YMBA]
by Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia
Grinnell College

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Introduction

Darjeeling and Kalimpong have long played important roles in the development of global knowledge about Tibetan and Himalayan religions.[1] While both trade centres became known throughout the British empire for their recreational opportunities, favourable climate, and their famous respective exports of Darjeeling tea and Kalimpong wool, they were both the centres of a rich, dynamic, and as time went on, increasingly hybrid cultural life. Positioned as they were on the frontier between the multiple states of India, Bhutan, Sikkim, Tibet, and Nepal, as well as the British and Chinese empires, Darjeeling and Kalimpong were also both home to multiple religious traditions. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, Christian missionaries from Britain developed churches and educational institutions there in an attempt to gain a foothold in the hills. Their task was not an easy one, due to the strength of local traditions and the political and economic dominance of local Tibetan-derived Buddhist monastic institutions, which functioned as satellite institutions and commodity brokers for the nearby Buddhist states of Tibet, Sikkim, and Bhutan. British colonial administrators and scholars from around the world took advantage of the easy proximity of these urban centres for their explorations, and considered them as museums of living Buddhism. While Tibet remained closed for all but a lucky few, other explorers, Orientalist scholars, and administrators considered Darjeeling and Kalimpong as micro-versions of Tibet. As a consequence, their religious institutions, and more notably, the individuals linked to them, became convenient centres for the study of Buddhism as it was constructed by global intellectual networks.[2]

However, the representation of the Buddhism in this area as a form of diluted Tibetan Buddhism by Orientalist scholars and colonial administrators is problematic, and obscures the far more complex cosmopolitan interactions that were taking place under the surface between different traditions. Not only did a number of the Sikkimese and Bhutanese residents of these towns practice their own unique forms of Buddhism, but other ethno-cultural groups, including the Newars from Nepal, were part of broader global Buddhist movements of reform and revival. This paper seeks to validate the important place that both Darjeeling and Kalimpong played in the cosmopolitan networks of the modern Buddhist revival taking place in the twentieth century throughout Asia and further afield in Europe, America, and burgeoning communities in colonial states in the Pacific. It will do so by focusing on the activities of two branches of the Young Men’s Buddhist Association, based in Darjeeling and Kalimpong, respectively, between the 1930s and 1960s. While the name of these organisations suggests that they were both affiliated to an association founded in Colombo, Ceylon[3] in 1898, their local histories were far more complex and show the importance of local agency in global movements. The identities of the respective founders of these associations represent the abundance of global interactions and the diversity of forms of Buddhist cosmopolitanism characteristic of this period.

The Darjeeling branch was established by a Sikkimese aristocrat turned Ceylon-educated Theravadin monk and educational reformer named Kazi Pak Tséring (‘Phags tshe ring,[4] also known as S. K. Jinorasa, 1895/6?–1943). The founder of the Kalimpong branch was Dennis Lingwood (born 1925), an ambitious British army deserter and poet, who converted to Buddhism in his late teens and, after ordination in Asia, took the name Sangharakshita. Both of these figures also had distinctive visions for their organisations, and both have left different legacies that reflect the fate of civil societies, social clubs, and other global networks in the era of post-world war nationalism. One thing they did have in common, though, was the use of forms of colonial social organisation in order to reimagine Buddhism as the source of an alternative modernity beyond the state in the modern world.

The local histories of these very different characters place Darjeeling and Kalimpong into broader trends of organisations, associations, and societies that asserted the potential of religion to function as a source of translocal political affiliation that could counter colonial critiques of indigenous traditions and identity. However, with the events of the mid-twentieth century, including decolonisation in South Asia, the rise of Communism in China, and the triumph of nationalism, these religious networks and forms of Buddhist cosmopolitanism were considerably changed. While different Buddhist traditions and their respective cultures became further globalised, this took place in a new marketplace of spiritual consumption, where religious traditions were also commodified and, in some ways, homogenised to facilitate their expansion. The kind of hybridity that characterised the inter-cultural and inter-traditional exchange facilitated by global cultural and social associations during the early twentieth century disappeared. The result was that the local histories of movements such as the Young Men’s Buddhist Association, which historically played an important role in these global movements, have often become obscured.

Buddhist modernity as an alternative modernity: The Young Men’s Buddhist Association as a global movement

The Young Men’s Buddhist Association was by no means a unique organisation for its time. A common form of social organisation in colonial societies was the establishment of new associations in colonial centers from where they radiated outwards, bringing together otherwise disparate racial and caste communities in groups with shared social goals. These associations were significant due to their similar outward form as they spread across different communities, and to their role in encouraging the adoption of ideal colonial behaviours among local elites and Anglophiles. The Rotary Association is a pertinent example of a socially-minded organisation that required its local members to adopt a British upper-class sense of propriety which bound together colonial and local elites in different environments.[5]

Religious associations were another form of these groups, with the added motivation of evangelisation and conversion. These associations were distinct from missionary organisations that were often limited in their goals. The foundation of the Young Men’s Christian Association (known more popularly as the YMCA) in 1844 challenged the usual focus on conversion and responded to the needs of industrialising societies by providing recreational as well as religious activities for young people moving into urban centres. These activities included the founding of educational and athletic institutions which would encourage the development of a healthy “mind, body, and spirit.”[6] As the YMCA opened in the cities of colonial Latin America, Asia, and Africa, these institutions became part of an informal colonial structure, whereby local members of the community were inculcated with colonial attitudes and ideas regarding religion, the mind, and the body through informal interaction and activity.[7]

However, these were not merely unidirectional movements established by colonial elites. Local agents and groups interacted with the ideas propagated by these groups and utilised these forms of social organisation in different ways for anti-colonial purposes as well. Importantly, associations connected with Asian religions also began to appear alongside religious revival movements. Mark Frost has outlined how, in Indian Ocean port cities, movements and associations developed through the use of new technologies, such as newspapers, periodicals, and the telegram, and educational facilities including schools and universities were established as part of the consolidation of the colonial state. These associations were founded by members of “a non-European, western-educated professional class that serviced the requirements of expanding international commercial interests and the simultaneous growth of the imperial state.” Their establishment was motivated partly in response to pressures that colonialism exerted on traditional social practices, as well as in response to the development of Orientalist depictions that dismissed their cultural heritage. These networks saw local intellectuals draw on modernized forms of their own traditions for social, political, and educational change in response to these critiques. These activities often fed into the rise of nationalist movements, as among Hindu groups in India and the South Asian diaspora, who used religion and culture as central elements in the creation of discrete identities that could act as social binders.[8]

The YMCA in India represented one such association.[9] While it took several attempts for it to be firmly established, the current association, organised in 1875, began as a missionary forum for inculcating Christian values through Bible study and prayer meetings. However, it was not synonymous with the colonial state, as many of the early foreign participants and founders were Americans, who had travelled to India as part of the set of broader American Christian activities that Ian Tyrell has named “America’s moral empire” that aimed to spread American ideals of democracy and freedom (including support of Indian independence), but without state interests.[10] [dubious -- discuss] The YMCA India quickly developed from a foreign-dominated group into a more complex organisation where Indian leaders worked to respond to local social issues, especially related to education and politics, and took part in global Christian networks.[11] Other religious communities then replicated elements of the YMCA’s organisational success, with Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh communities establishing similar associations in the late nineteenth century around their own concerns.

Buddhism was noteworthy in this context because, like Islam, its historical presence in a number of Asian countries could be used as a platform for both cosmopolitanism and nationalism. It was also interesting due to its popularity and sympathetic representation in European and American intellectual cultures, where it was presented as an Asian tradition whose rationalism, empiricism, democratic tendencies, and philosophical tradition made it compatible with modernity.[12] Conveniently, it had largely died out in India, which left its contemporary status there open for interpretation by colonial scholars and administrators as well as local intellectuals, while Ceylon and Burma, two of the places where it was still active, were both British colonies, allowing easy access for Western scholars and spiritual seekers.

Ceylon was the locus of several important Buddhist revival movements and was cited in anti-colonial discourse as a prominent site of local identity. This prominence had developed out of the famous Buddhist-Christian debates of the late nineteenth century, particularly the 1873 debates at Panadura, in which Buddhist intellectuals took on Christian missionaries, using their same rhetoric and technologies to triumph in public reassertions of Buddhist superiority. These successes were widely celebrated in both English and Sinhala newspapers at home and abroad. They were key moments in overcoming missionary hegemony, long connected with the control exercised by foreign political and economic establishments. The Theosophists, another influential global movement, took an interest in Ceylonese Buddhism and played a key role in the dissemination of news regarding the triumph of Buddhism over Christian missionaries. The leaders of the movement, Madame Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891) and Colonel Henry Olcott (1832–1907), travelled to Ceylon in 1880 after reading about the Panadura debates, and promoted their own understanding of Buddhism through public rituals and the creation of the Buddhist Theosophical Society in Colombo.[13] Olcott’s experiences in Ceylon led him to write the influential explanatory text The Buddhist Catechism, in which he promoted his own American and Protestant version of Buddhism with its emphasis on textualisation, rationalism, and demystification.[14] The Buddhist Catechism was widely circulated in Ceylon and further afield, consolidating Buddhist movements both locally and globally with its clear, accessible, and modernist interpretations of Buddhist lore and philosophy.

Q. Was the Buddha God?

A. No. Buddha Dharma teaches no "divine" incarnation.

Q. Was he a man?

A. Yes; but the wisest, noblest and most holy being, who had developed himself in the course of countless births far beyond all other beings, the previous BUDDHAS alone excepted.

Q. Are these wonder-working powers miraculous?

A. No, but natural to all men and capable of being developed by a certain course of training.

Q. And what is that which is most valuable?

A. To know the whole secret of man's existence and destiny, so that we may estimate at no more than their actual value this life and its relations; and so that we may live in a way to ensure the greatest happiness and the least suffering for our fellow-men and ourselves.

Q. What is Nirvāna?

A. A condition of total cessation of changes, of perfect rest, of the absence of desire and illusion and sorrow, of the total obliteration of everything that goes to make up the physical man. Before reaching Nirvāna man is constantly being reborn; when he reaches Nirvāna he is born no more.

Q. What causes us to be reborn?

A. The unsatisfied selfish desire (Skt., trshnā; Pālī, tanhā) for things that belong to the state of personal existence in the material world. This unquenched thirst for physical existence (bhāva) is a force, and has a creative power in itself so strong that it draws the being back into mundane life.

Q. Does Buddhism teach that man is reborn only upon our earth?

A. As a general rule that would be the case, until he had evolved beyond its level; but the inhabited worlds are numberless. The world upon which a person is to have his next birth, as well as the nature of the rebirth itself, is decided by the preponderance of the individual's merit or demerit. In other words, it will be controlled by his attractions, as science would describe it; or by his Karma, as we, Buddhists, would say.

-- The Buddhist Catechism, by Henry S. Olcott

The interest in Ceylon as a site for Buddhist revival was not limited to Westerners. One of modern Buddhism’s most famous transnational activists, Anagarika Dharmapala (1864–1933), was originally from Colombo. While he is remembered for promoting meditation, Sunday schools, and other elements of Buddhist modernism among the bilingual elites of Ceylon and further afield,[15] his motivations and viewpoints were complex; he was also known for articulating communalist ideas, and is remembered as an early nationalist. Outside of Ceylon he was a widely known lecturer and participant in high-profile meetings, including the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1892, and was also the leader of the Maha Bodhi Society, which aimed to rejuvenate Bodh Gaya as a transnational centre for Buddhist communities.[16]

While the Maha Bodhi Society had perhaps the greatest visibility among these global Buddhist associations, other organisations had their own agendas. The Young Men’s Buddhist Association (YMBA) was originally founded in Colombo, Ceylon, in 1898 by a group of English-language educated elites. While materials related to its founding do not cite the YMCA as an influence,[17] the name of the organisation and its goals can be seen as mirroring the YMCA. According to the founders of the movement, the purpose of the YMBA was to promote the study and encourage the practice of Buddhism, and to provide a forum for the discussion of related subjects.[18] In its actual activities, the YMBA very consciously mirrored Christian missionary organisations. It held Sunday schools, where Buddhist children dressed in white sang hymns to the Buddha. It helped to disseminate Olcott’s Buddhist Catechism. Its additional activities included the foundation of educational institutions, including groups providing free coaching and tuition in academic topics, and recreational facilities for young men. It published The Buddhist, which functioned as a site for the dissemination of modern Buddhist ideology as well as news and opinions that would help to build a community.[19] Like the YMCA, it spread to other Southeast Asian colonial cities such as Rangoon and Singaporein the early twentieth century, and eventually as far afield as Japan and England. The Buddhist was also widely disseminated within the broader networks of Buddhist sympathisers of the day.

As with many Christian missionary organisations, the YMBA did not have a consistent ideology as it travelled. While many Buddhist leaders at the time, such as Olcott and Charles Pfoundes (1840–1907), attempted to found global Buddhist movements with strong central ideologies and activities,[20] the YMBAs that appeared around the world were often quite separate from the Ceylon YMBA, with activities that were guided by local interests and agency. An example of this is the YMBA established in Burma in the first decade of the twentieth century. Alicia Turner argues that this YMBA was representative of other social organisations in colonial Burma that functioned to bring Burmese people into a “moral community” dedicated to promoting and “saving” Buddhism in a time of rapid change.[21] It came to be regarded as an important early nationalist organisation, as its founders had promoted the phrase “To be Burmese is to be Buddhist” in order to define a religious and national identity for themselves and others in their local western-educated, cosmopolitan circles.[22]

The Young Men's Buddhist Association (YMBA) (Burmese: ဗုဒ္ဓဘာသာ ကလျာဏယုဝအသင်း) was a Buddhist cultural organisation in Burma.

The YMBA was founded in Rangoon in 1906 as a federation of lay Buddhist groups dating back to 1898, with prominent founders including Ba Pe, U Kin, May Oung and Joseph Maung Gyi. It was modelled on the Young Men's Buddhist Association founded in Ceylon in 1898, and was created to preserve the Buddhist-based culture in Burma against the backdrop of British colonialism including the incorporation of Burma into India.

The YMBA started its first open campaign against British rule in 1916, and after many protests obtained a ruling that abbots could impose dress codes on all visitors to Buddhists monasteries.

The organisation split in 1918 when older members insisted that it should remain apolitical, whilst younger members sought to enter the political sphere, sending a delegation to India to meet the Viceroy and Secretary of State to request the separation of Burma from India. Further lobbying delegations were sent to London in 1919 and 1920. Following its key involvement in the 1920 student strike, the most nationalist elements of the YMBA broke off and formed a political party known as the General Council of Burmese Associations, whilst a senior faction later formed the Independent Party.

The organisation founded multiple schools. It was one of the key organisations in the start of nationalist sentiment in Burma.

-- Young Men's Buddhist Association (Burma), by Wikipedia

The YMBA as a movement was thus far from centralised, but the continued invocation of the YMBA “brand” was important for the legitimacy of the organization, and for reinforcing the idea of a global community of Buddhists. This local autonomy was particularly important in the case of the YMBA, for it allowed for the assertion of local agency in reaction to different political situations.

The lack of a centralised administration means that tracing the genealogy and interconnected history of these local organisations can be difficult. However, the fact that the same “brand” was adopted locally remains significant for understanding the development of international and inter-traditional Buddhist links during this period, leading to the creation of an imagined, if not actual, Buddhist cosmopolitanism. This cosmopolitanism provided its members with a sense of shared identity, and a platform for the assertion of Buddhism as a modern ideology in the face of missionary and colonial critiques of local traditions. Studying the local adaptations of the YMBA brand also allows for an understanding of just how widely the idea of Buddhist modernism was accepted in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a crucial moment for global networking and anti-colonial organising.

Reassessing Buddhist modernism in the Himalayas: Buddhist institutions and colonialism in Darjeeling and Kalimpong

The establishment of YMBAs in Darjeeling and Kalimpong marked salient moments in the local adaptation of these global movements. These branches were among the most remote of the organisation, but were to have significant influence on their local environments and later, particularly in the case of Kalimpong, on a global level. Historically, Darjeeling and Kalimpong had been part of the Buddhist kingdoms of Sikkim and Bhutan. British trade interests had led to the annexation of Darjeeling by the East India Company in 1835. Originally it had been a small village, centred around a monastery founded in the 1740s as a summer residence by the eighteenth century Sikkimese Buddhist savant Dzokchen Khenchen Rölpé Dorjé (Rdzogs chen mkhan chen Rol pa’i rdo rje).[23] Other monasteries in the area had different institutional affiliations. Ging Monastery, the most venerable one, was part of the Sikkimese royal monastery Pemayangtsé’s estate, and as a consequence Darjeeling was under the nominal political control of the royal lamas. The annexation of Darjeeling by the British therefore had significant religious as well as political consequences. While monasteries and temples continued to operate, those that had been satellite institutions of Sikkimese monasteries saw a decline in patronage. This decline was exacerbated by the arrival of new forms of religiosity. The process of conflict and accommodation between Buddhism and Christianity is powerfully represented in the story of Observatory Hill. Observatory Hill had originally been the site of a Mahakala Shrine patronised by diverse Buddhist and Hindu cultural groups. The original Pemayangtse satellite monastery was situated here as well. When in the 1850s the British built a church here, the local congregants complained to the authorities that the rituals in the monastery were too loud and disruptive. To accommodate British requests, the monastery was thus forced to move, losing its cosmologically significant position at the centre of Darjeeling.[24] This loss of position symbolised the loss of local agency more generally in Darjeeling. The arrival of more Christian congregations and missionaries further marginalised local religions and cultural communities.

In contrast to Darjeeling’s religious foundations, before the arrival of the British, Kalimpong was already an important trade centre for the exchange of yak wool and musk in Himalayan trade networks, particularly between Tibet, Bhutan, and Sikkim. Originally a part of Sikkim, it was absorbed into Bhutan in 1700 during Bhutan’s occupation of Sikkim (1700 and 1708). It became part of Bengal when the British invaded Bhutan in 1864 and captured the Dooars in early 1865. Later in the year, a formal treaty fixed the new border, and most of the Bhutanese territory in the plains was ceded to the British, along with the sliver of hill tract that included Kalimpong.[25] In 1866 the tract was added to the administrative District of Darjeeling. It was home to a number of different trans-Himalayan cultural groups, who established their own places of worship around the central bazaar. As with Darjeeling, the arrival of Christian missionaries led to the development of a shared religious and cultural space in Kalimpong, though due to its position as an important trade and economic centre between empires, Buddhism was not as marginalised. The appearance and gradual dominance of Christian missionary schools did, however, produce a new form of local identity. The local elites who sent their children there, including the royal families of Sikkim and Bhutan, did so in order to provide their children with what was considered a “modern” education, which would presumably provide them with more awareness of colonial society, thereby creating a more even standing with the British. The missionaries, for their part, believed they were leading a civilising mission in the hills. The power dynamics produced by these missionary institutions in Kalimpong were complex, and rather than creating a ground for asserting colonial authority and mind-set, local agents used this mind-set to their own economic and political advantage. Educational experiments with local students in Darjeeling were similarly ambiguous in their outcome. While the Darjeeling Government High School was created in 1891 by the British authorities to train indigenous collaborators, particularly for surveillance work in Tibet, only some of the pandits that were trained ended up collecting materials in Tibet, while others took part in local modernisation and anti-colonial movements. As a consequence, the school’s program was discontinued.[26]

The appearance of the YMBA and Buddhist organisations is another example of how a global movement, with its beginnings as a mirror organization of a colonial association, was modified to fit local needs. The appearance of the YMBA in the eastern Himalayas contradicts widely held assumptions regarding the absence of modern forms of Buddhism in Tibetan communities throughout the Himalayas, articulated among others by Donald S. Lopez, Jr. when he wrote,

Modern Buddhism did not come to Tibet. There were no movements to ordain women, no publication of Buddhist magazines, no formation of lay Buddhist societies, no establishment of orphanages, no liberal critique of Buddhism as contrary to scientific progress, no Tibetan delegates to the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago, no efforts by Tibetans to found world Buddhist organizations.[27]

In light of more recent research, the “modern Buddhism” characterized in this list might be too narrowly defined. The Tibetan State and other practitioners of Tibetan-derived Buddhism elsewhere in the Himalayas were not as isolated as this quote might suggest. The Thirteenth Dalai Lama, for example, was very interested in reform, and was a member of the international Maha Bodhi Society. The Oxford-educated Sikkimese prince (and later king) Sidkeong Tulku was also deeply interested in modern Buddhist organisations and in Buddhist reform in Sikkim.[28] The eastern Himalayas were also a crucial link in broader scholarly debate about Buddhism, as much of the scholarly and popular information regarding Tibetan Buddhism was transferred through the same trade networks that linked Darjeeling and Kalimpong with the rest of the British empire via the European and American scholars visiting the area. These included the British civil servant/scholar L. A. Waddell (1854–1938), the Belgian-French author-explorer Alexandra David-Neel (1868–1969), the Italian author Marco Pallis (1895–1989), and American self-styled mystical seeker Theos Bernard (1908–1947).[29]

The appearance of the YMBA in these areas, linked as they were by the circulation of people, commodities, and ideas facilitated by empire, is not surprising. However, the personalities that founded these associations, and their relationships with colonial authorities and broader global networks, reveal the very different ways Buddhism could be used for social organization. The founder of the Darjeeling YMBA, Kazi Pak Tséring, and the Kalimpong branch, Sangharakshita, both had complex and differing attitudes towards Buddhism as a cultural artefact and device for social and political change.

The Darjeeling YMBA (founded c. 1930): Education and Theravada anti-colonialism in the activities of Kazi Pak Tséring

In 1938 a new school was constructed on the road leading to lower Bhutia Basti, down the path from Chowrastra, the bustling centre of Darjeeling. It was prominent due to its distinctive gate, next to a large stupa that enclosed a white Burmese Buddha statue. Beneath the shrine large letters read: “YOUNG MEN’S BUDDHIST ASSOCIATION HEAD-OFFICE.SCHOOL.&c” [sic]. At 9am every morning, children in smart pressed school uniforms streamed through the gate into the simple white-washed two-floored school to begin the day in a unique way. Rather than reciting a Christian or even Tibetan prayer, the sound of Pali would instead echo from the school room, as the children “took refuge” in the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. How did such an institution come to appear in the environment of Darjeeling? And who was the yellow-robed figure bustling about the premises who lived in one of the rooms downstairs?

This figure was no other than Kazi Pak Tséring, a Lepcha from Sikkim and a Theravada monk who went by the Pali name S. K. Jinorasa. The story of Kazi Pak Tséring and how he came to establish the YMBA Darjeeling is a complex one, which speaks to the complexities of adapting colonial rule to local culture in the eastern Himalayas, as well as forms of local response. More generally, this figure represents how traditions such as Buddhism could be modified and renegotiated to represent an alternative form of modernity and social change for individual agents and intellectuals, who cannot be categorised simply as either pro-British Anglophiles or rebellious nationalists.[30] The parts of his life story that can be documented suggest a different approach for understanding such figures, and the attempt to string them together here takes as its model Alicia Turner, Laurence Cox, and Brian Bocking’s work on the mysterious monk Dhammaloka, who was also a key figure in a number of transnational Buddhist networks.[31] Pak Tséring’s life also highlights the ways in which colonial authorities were beginning to interfere with everyday life in Sikkim.

Kazi Pak Tséring was born in Pakyong in 1895 or 1896, into the family of the famous Sikkimese Phodrang Lama Karma Tenkyong (Pho drang bla ma Kar ma bstan skyong) of the aristocratic Khangsarpa clan. The Phodrang Lamas had risen to power during the reign of the sixth Sikkimese king, Tendzin Namgyel (Bstan ’dzin rnam rgyal, c. nineteenth century).[32] By the late nineteenth century, Phodrang Lama was one of the most powerful men in Sikkim, particularly due to his close relationship with the British authorities. He died around the turn of the century, leaving two young sons, one of whom was Pak Tséring. Pak Tséring received an education under the patronage of Sidkeong Tulku, the crown prince of Sikkim, who had become interested in modernizing Sikkim. Sidkeong was interested in educating the children of Sikkimese elites, especially Kazis, or landlords, so that they could take part in the colonial state, with a view to eventually gaining more authority. In order to do this, in 1905 he proposed the founding of a school, which came to be known as Bhutia Boarding School. Pak Tséring was part of the original Bhutia Boarding School class of 1906.

In 1912, the powerful land holder Jeerung Dewan Karma Drugyü (Kar ma grub rgyud, ?–1912) passed away at his estate at Chakung in western Sikkim. He left behind two wives and vast estates in Darjeeling and Chakung. He also left behind a complex legal situation, as he had no heir and therefore, according to Sikkimese law, his estates were to revert to State management. In order to counter the State’s claims to the land, his family claimed to have adopted the seventeen-year-old Kazi Pak Tséring.[33] Charles Bell, the British Political Officer in charge of the Sikkimese state, was skeptical of these claims, and so began a drawn-out series of court cases. Though Pak Tséring was involved in these cases for several years, it appears that by 1919 he wanted to escape from the bureaucratic entanglements, and signed over his legal rights and representation to his cousin Yishay Wangchuk.[34]

His next destination was far from conventional. At around this time (no exact dates are available), Pak Tséring travelled to Ceylon. As no official records of his travels remain in Sikkimese or in Sri Lankan archives, he must have done so independently, without State sanction. It remains unclear why he decided to travel to Ceylon and what he did there, but when he returned to Sikkim in the 1920s, he had taken ordination in the Theravada tradition and was now calling himself D. S. (later S. K.) Jinorasa.[35] He was not the only Sikkimese Vajrayana Buddhist to convert to Theravada at this time. Pemba Tendup (Pad ma bstan sgrub), or as he became known, S. Mahinda Thero, was another student who had received educational patronage from Sidkeong. He lived in Ceylon for more than three decades, and became a famous poet and supporter of Sri Lankan independence.[36] Had Pak Tséring been influenced by Mahinda’s story? Perhaps. It is also rumoured that he spent time studying in Burma; in Sikkim in the 1930s he was nicknamed “Burma gélong” (Burma bhikkhu) in recognition of his time abroad and his unique form of Buddhism.[37]

After Pak Tséring returned to Darjeeling and Chakung he quickly emerged as an important Buddhist figure through his establishment of a Darjeeling branch of the Young Men’s Buddhist Association. While the exact date of establishment is not clear, it was certainly already active before the founding of a similar initiative in Gangtok, which Pak Tséring may have been involved with as well. In July 1928, Sonam Tséring (Bsod nams tshe ring) submitted an application to the eleventh king of Sikkim, Tashi Namgyal (Bkra shis rnam rgyal), to be allowed to establish a YMBA in Gangtok, claiming that such an organization would “improve the welfare and social interest” of the Sikkimese.[38] The purposes of the group were very general, and “[a]ny Buddhist having sympathy for the movement” was eligible to join. Despite the English language rules set out in the document and its formal tone, to the YMBA enthusiasts in Gangtok, the organisation appeared to be an excuse to continue with other pre-established forms of local practice. For example, on the submitted list of compulsory group activities, a number of Sikkimese practices were included, such as donations for ill members, “Khimsar Trashi” (Khim gsar bkra shis) for new house consecrations in the group, and “Thoongton” for new births in their families. More noteworthy was the provision that “No members shall be allowed to bring any kind of intoxicating drink wherever the meeting takes place.”[39] The king approved the application, noting that the organization had been successful elsewhere, including in Darjeeling.[40] The Political Officer asked for more information related to the size and purpose of the organization, but the ultimate fate of the proposal is not available in the Sikkim State Archives. The YMBA in Sikkim never held any prominent public office or organised events, and it thus appears to have been founded for the purposes of admiration and imitation of the Darjeeling branch, rather than to contribute to the broader local social life or the transnational movement.

In contrast, Pak Tséring’s namesake organization in Darjeeling was to become very active and influential. One of the earliest mentions we find of the YMBA in any official record is in a letter that he wrote to the YMBA in Ceylon, which was published in The Buddhist in 1931:

Our friend Mr. Phagtsring [i.e. Pak Tséring] of Darjeeling writes, “I am building a small family boarding at Bhutia Basty to give native education to boys and girls. I have now nearly completed the building, and I hope I can open the School in July. I am also having a small Vihara and rooms for Bhikkhus on the top floor so I can give accommodation to the Bhikkhus.”[41]

This small note remains as the only official correspondence related to the YMBA in Darjeeling. However, the YMBA Darjeeling became locally well known, particularly as an educational institution, but also for its connection with other religious and educational groups. It was based in Bhutia Busti, an area to which Pak Tséring had links through his Phodong Lama ancestry. Originally housed in a simple shed, a large two-storied school building was eventually constructed. It received sponsorship from the sons of Raja Seth Baldeo Das Birla “for the followers of Arya Dharma (Buddhists and Hindus),” and was consolidated in 1938 under a group of trustees, made up of elite members from the local community.[42]

Although Pak Tséring had planned to open the YMBA in 1931, the first official class was only enrolled on April 24th, 1935. From the beginning, the students at the school were a mixed bunch from different classes, castes, and ethnicities. While many of the Bhutia children were the offspring of the local lamas, the Lepchas and “Kami” caste members from different Nepali-speaking communities were from families connected with a variety of vocations, including, according to the log book, meat sellers, rickshaw-sardars, clerks, tailors, gold-smiths, and electricians.[43] While most schools in the area had many different ethnic communities in attendance, the YMBA school was unique due to its representation of diverse economic groups and vocations. With its robust curriculum, it soon made a name for itself, as its junior students gained admission to some of the most prestigious higher educational institutions in the Darjeeling and Kalimpong area, and also due to its excellent English language tuition. Many students from the school went on to have distinguished civil service careers.[44]

Another point in which the YMBA school differed from other local schools was its distinctly Buddhist character. Unlike the prestigious local missionary schools, religious proselytisation was not a major goal for the school, although Buddhist festivals were observed and there were daily prayers. As has been said, these were in Pali, reflecting Pak Tséring’s dedication to his status as a Theravada monk. The Buddhist element of the school was emphasised more in its secondary purpose, as a research institute. While records of activities related to this element of the YMBA are sparse, there are letters between Pak Tséring (alias Jinorasa) and well-known scholars and explorers who passed through Darjeeling in the 1930s and early 1940s. The famous modern Tibetan scholar Gendün Chöpel (Dge ’dun chos ’phel, 1903–1951?) lived at the school for eighteen months from 1935, and taught Tibetan there in exchange for food, lodging, and English tutorials.[45] He also gave much assistance to Theos Bernard, the American explorer and yoga enthusiast who later visited Tibet and had planned to start a Tibetan studies institution in the United States with Gendün Chöpel acting as the main translator. Bernard met Pak Tséring (whom he knew as Jinorasa) around 1936, and found him to be enormously well-connected and knowledgeable.[46] Letters exchanged between them show shared interests in Buddhist studies. Pak Tséring informed Bernard of his plans to translate major Tibetan texts,[47] which was noteworthy given Pak Tséring’s status as a Theravada monk.

Pak Tséring did not render this assistance without expectation of return. In 1940 and 1941, Pak Tséring wrote to Bernard three times, each time requesting donations for the school and the association. He justified his requests, saying that,

America is a very rich country so please try to give me some financial help and induce your friends to help the Association by sending some substantial contributions. The money spent on this Association will not go in vain and it will help the Association in doing more useful works for the humanity. Today the world is being ruined by wars. This is nothing but [the] outcome of hatred, ignorance, and greed among the people and nations. We must therefore, try to contribute some very useful thing to the world so that the world will be free from the useless bloodshed and will enjoy peace and Universal brotherhood.[48]

In other letters, he appealed to Bernard and promised research assistance in return. Not at all a passive local informant, Pak Tséring was aware that without local guidance and assistance, scholars such as Bernard would not be able to realize their ambitions, and he used this reasoning with potential donors for well-argued pleas for assistance. It appears, however, that Bernard’s assistance to the YMBA was never substantial.

The main reason why Pak Tséring was in need of financial assistance was due to the YMBA’s activities beyond Darjeeling in west Sikkim, particularly around Chakung. Today, his major legacy is his founding of several secular schools for children of all backgrounds in west Sikkim. The first of these schools was established in 1934 in Chakung, even before the Darjeeling school was completed. This suggests that the court cases had eventually been resolved and provided him with at least a small home. While local oral tradition states that as early as 1915 Pak Tséring was providing education for children of the Chakung estate in his own house, a formal school was established in 1934 with around thirty local village children attending.[49] This was the first school of its kind in Sikkim. Previously, secular schools had been established only for sons of the landholding elite and civil servants, while all other schools were run by missionaries. Therefore, establishing schools for all children was considered very new and quite radical. This demonstrated Pak Tséring’s continued ties with the area and commitment to the school, and his name continued to appear in meeting minutes until 1939. The school at Chakung quickly established a reputation for its unique mission and excellence, despite its fiscal problems, and even the king of Sikkim praised its work on tours in the 1930s.[50] Pak Tséring also presided over the establishment of schools at Kaluk, Hee-gaon, Mangalbarey, Soring, Namchi, Gezing, and Timboorbong.[51] Graduates were often sent to be teachers elsewhere, and despite the enormous challenges faced in raising money for the schools and their infrastructure, they had a huge impact on Sikkimese society, and many have become government schools today.

How did Pak Tséring go from being a disenfranchised young Kazi railing against the Political Officer to a Theravadin bhikkhu establishing schools throughout the state? The connection between these different periods of his life remains unclear. One possible explanation is that he was inspired by the YMBA, since the Association was active elsewhere in Asia in promoting non-missionary education. His personal background might provide another explanation. As a child of privilege, Pak Tséring had gained the favour of Sidkeong Tulku and had received a modern education. However, unlike his peers, he lost some of his privilege when the State complicated the recognition of his adoption and he lost his family lands. A number of students who benefited from his educational ventures posit that his difficult circumstances made him sympathetic to the suffering of commoners, and that he felt education could provide them with alternatives to both British colonialism and the Sikkimese monarchy, which had been significantly weakened by British governance.[52] Unlike his father and uncle, Pak Tséring did not benefit from his association with the British administration, which might explain why he was critical of both the colonial administration and the monarchy. His vision for the future, which included free education for all, suggested a third, alternate trajectory beyond either colonialism or a return to the monarchy.

This vision was never realised. On the 24th of February, 1943, Pak Tséring jumped from a bridge on the road between Darjeeling and Chakung, his body carried away by the rapid currents of a river near Nayabazaar. As with many suicides, the reasons remain unclear. The news shocked his colleagues. He had appeared happy and successful, at peace with his situation in life. Oral narratives suggest that his decision may have been linked to a family feud, or to deeper anguish regarding the lack of support for his initiatives from the state and from society in general.[53] This latter narrative seems to fit with the continued financial problems faced by the YMBA. In his last correspondence with Theos Bernard in December 1941, he again requested funds, suggesting that keeping his dreams intact was an ongoing challenge.

While it is impossible to know what really happened to Pak Tséring that day on the bridge, we can get a glimpse of the impact of his experiences on his motivations in this same letter to Bernard, where he describes himself as a kindred spirit with Gendün Chöpel.

Both of us [i.e., Pak Tséring and Gendün Chöpel] have no desire for worldly fame and wealth. We have seen and enjoyed them and we find it utterly useless thing [sic] to run after such mirage. Today you see quite clearly what worldly fame and wealth mean. But if we can do some useful works for the human beings we are ever ready to do it. Ignorance is bad and today the world suffers from ignorance. Wisdom is strength but the strength should be supported by selfless motives and then only the Wisdom can be used for happiness of the human beings.[54]

This letter is rendered all the more tragic by an awareness of the fates of both of these individuals, as Chöpel died an alcoholic after a long imprisonment in Lhasa around 1951. As Carole McGranahan has stated, unfulfilled endings were all too common among Himalayan intellectuals of the period, who sought alternate modernities for their people and whose lives reveal the limits of cosmopolitan affiliation as a practicality in local settings.[55] Pak Tséring did leave a lasting legacy, despite this ending. His cousin (who is often referred to as his brother), Lhendrup Dorje, known more widely as L. D. Kazi, later assumed responsibility for the schools. He was to have a long lasting impact on Sikkimese society; after years as an advocate for equal access to education, he was a key figure in the revolution that led to the beginnings of political democracy for Sikkim in 1975, and became Sikkim’s first Chief Minister in the Indian Union.[56]

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Part 2 of 2

The Kalimpong YMBA (1950–c. 1957): Print, education, popular worship, and global Buddhist modernism in the activities of Sangharakshita

The YMBA in Kalimpong started, under quite different auspices from that in Darjeeling, when a young British bhikkhu arrived with his Bengali Buddhist teacher in 1950. Originally invited by Gyan Jyoti, a scion of an influential local Newar trading family, to help revive Theravada Buddhism among the Newars of the area,[57] Sangharakshita remained in Kalimpong for another fourteen years, and developed a formidable set of very different global networks around his base. Unlike Pak Tséring’s association, the Kalimpong YMBA has a very rich, albeit one-sided, set of archival materials in the form of Sangharakshita’s published memoirs.[58]

Born Dennis Lingwood in South London in 1925, Sangharakshita’s story was in many ways representative of the growing Western fascination with Buddhism in the twentieth century. Sangharakshita was a bookish child with an Orientalist fascination with the East. He was sent to India for military service during the Second World War, and used his time in Ceylon and Singapore to participate in local religious networks and associations, including branches of the Theosophical Society. After the war he decided to remain in India, and spent time in Hindu ashrams and as an ascetic before deciding to become ordained in the Theravada tradition in 1949. Following his ordination, he travelled to Nepal, where Buddhism was still heavily restricted, but was undergoing a revival led by Theravada monks from Burma.[59] After spending time there and studying at Benares Hindu University with the influential Pali scholar Bhikkhu Jagdish Kashyap, who was a key figure in Buddhist revival movements in India, he ended up in Kalimpong.

While Kashyap and Sangharakshita had originally been invited to Kalimpong as guests of Gyan Jyoti and family, according to Sangharakshita’s memoirs they found the local situation complex. The Theravada revival group Dharmodaya was active among the local Newars, but finding sustained patronage was a challenge, and the initial invitation they had received did not guarantee support. Kashyap decided to move on, but instructed his student to remain, to “serve Buddhism.” He did so, making connections in the local community and eventually developing an “informal network of English-knowing people who, for one reason or another, had some kind of interest in, or sympathy for, Buddhism”[60] and, with some friends from this network, decided to establish a formal group for organizing activities. This group was to be a Kalimpong branch of the Young Men’s Buddhist Association. Sangharakshita was aware of the original Ceylon Association, and particularly its print organ, The Buddhist, where he had published articles.[61] It appears that branding was primary in this decision, as it helped lend formality to the establishment of the group. He describes the founding by quoting from an article written at the time:

On Sunday 6th May, 1950, the young men of Kalimpong assembled in the Dharmodaya Vihara under the chairmanship of Rev. Sangharakshita with the object of establishing a Young Men’s Buddhist Association. After preliminary discussion resolutions concerning the objects and activities of the Association were unanimously passed, and office-bearers elected. It was decided to open a recreation room for the use of members as soon as possible and to inaugurate a series of weekly public lectures and debates. At the end of the meeting about thirty young men enrolled themselves as members of the Association.

He goes on to explain that “The ‘objects’ adopted at the meeting were (1) To unite the young men of Kalimpong and (2) to propagate the teachings of Buddhism by means of social, educational, and religious activities.”[62] The office bearers represented a number of different communities, including Newars and Darjeeling-born Tibetans.

The group was quick to begin organizing activities. Weekly lectures began on Sundays, and speakers included both residents and visitors to Kalimpong who had interests in Buddhism. The line-up appeared random, and depended on who was passing through at the time, irrespective of their qualifications and affiliation with Buddhism, though some of the more high-profile speakers included the Russian scholar Dr. George Roerich, who became an advisor to the organization during his residence in Kalimpong, as well as Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark, a European aristocrat and anthropologist of Tibetan societies.[63] Lectures were an important part of intellectual life in the town during the mid-twentieth century, and Sangharakshita’s own activities included giving lectures for various associations and at local institutions such as the Hill View Hotel.[64]

Many of these lectures provided the material for Stepping-Stones, a small magazine edited by Sangharakshita over twenty months between 1950 and 1951. The magazine included articles on Buddhism, poetry, short stories, and local news, as well as advertising by sponsors, such as the Jyoti family, the Himalayan Times newspaper, various trading houses and other affiliate Buddhist groups and publications. While the selection of articles appears somewhat random, and many seem to have been included because their authors were in Kalimpong, Stepping-Stones occupies a unique moment in print history. Parasmani Pradhan was a colleague and friend of Sangharakshita, and while he was responsible for printing the early editions of this journal at his Mani Printing Press in Darjeeling, he also sponsored the inclusion of a Nepali language section, edited by local literary luminary Bhaichand Pradhan. Sangharakshita’s excitement regarding this venture was largely due to its ability to contribute to the dissemination of knowledge about Buddhism among Nepali language communities, as he commented that nothing else was available in Nepali at the time. Due to its inclusion of modern literary forms and new genres, this section had significance for Nepali language communities well beyond Buddhism-focused topics.[65] The magazine began modestly, but as circulation took off, the YMBA Kalimpong became increasingly well known, and Sangharakshita was invited to start YMBA branches at Gangtok, Darjeeling, and Ajmer.[66]

The Association did more than host intellectual activities. It organised full moon rituals and pujas in commemoration of Buddhist holy days, as well as other public events. In March 1951, Sangharakshita and the YMBA also did much to insert Kalimpong into the pan-Asian tour of the sacred relics of two of the Buddha’s students, Shariputra and Maudgalyayana. The visit was an inter-traditional affair, involving the Newar Dharmodaya Vihara and local Tibetan monasteries, most notably the large monastery Tharpa Choling Gompa that was under the supervision of the popular local lama Tomo Geshe Rinpoche. Together with more serious religious activities, the Association also had an active recreation room, which was managed by an Activities Committee. It was centred around a ping-pong table and carrom-board, and patronised by young local men who paid fees every month. Sangharakshita and several of his expat colleagues also started a free tutoring class for high school students in order to help them prepare for exams.[67] Aside from these daily sessions, Sangharakshita also offered private English language tuition to support himself.

The free tutoring seems to have raised public awareness of the YMBA in Kalimpong more than any of its other activities. However, along with the recreation centre, it also caused the most problems in finding a permanent home for the Association. After several months, Sangharakshita was asked to move out of the Dharmodaya Vihara due to concerns among the more orthodox Newars that YMBA activities were leading to caste intermingling.[68] The democratic nature of the gatherings, in which members of all communities were welcome, was a hallmark of Buddhist modernist discourses of democracy and social justice. However, securing patronage for such ventures was more complicated, and like the Darjeeling YMBA, the Kalimpong Association struggled to find forms of income. By 1951, not even two years after its start, Stepping-Stones ceased publication. The Association changed premises a number of times, from a warehouse in the bazaar to a cottage, and then to another residence, before eventually gaining a permanent setting in 1957 after Sangharakshita had received donations from visiting scholars and others to purchase a headquarters, named the Triyana Vardhana Vihara, on the town's outskirts.[69]

By this point, however, the YMBA was defunct. Due to continued funding problems, in the late 1950s the YMBA Kalimpong became the Kalimpong branch of the Maha Bodhi Society. Sangharakshita had been associated with the Society in Calcutta for a number of years, and had eventually become a member of the editorial board and the main editor for the Maha Bodhi Journal, which he edited from the Calcutta office. The promise of a monthly donation of fifty rupees meant financial stability for Sangharakshita’s efforts, and despite his initial reluctance to be affiliated with the Maha Bodhi Society, which often had Hindu Brahmin presidents, he ultimately decided the affiliation would further the goals he shared with its founder, Dharmapala.[70]

Was Sangharakshita aware of the YMBA’s namesake in Darjeeling, where not even two decades before, another Theravada monk had struggled with similar challenges in securing patronage? On one occasion in the late 1950s, he acknowledges Pak Tséring:

The Bhutia Busti YMBA, as it was known, had no connection with its now defunct Kalimpong counterpart. It had been founded about twenty-five years earlier by Bhikkhu Jinorasa, a Sikkimese monk of noble family who had received ordination in Ceylon. After his death in 1931 the association’s religious activities had come to an end, except for the celebration of Vaishakha Purnima, and it was in the hope of my being able to revive these that I had agreed to stay in Bhutia Busti that autumn, at the YMBA’s spacious but run-down premises. Besides giving a public lecture on the Three Refuges and Five Precepts, and presiding at the Mahatma Gandhi birth anniversary celebrations, during my stay there I took every opportunity of pointing out to the people of the locality, many of whom were Buddhists, the need for taking a more active interest in the Dharma.[71]

It seems curious that Sangharakshita knew so little about the specifics of Pak Tséring’s activities, and even mistook the date of establishment, considering his claim to have been a close friend of Pak Tséring’s cousin, L. D. Kazi, and his wife, the mysterious Kazini Elisa Maria Dorji Khangsarpa.[72] However, it also appears to be representative of Sangharakshita’s character to overlook Pak Tséring’s efforts, as he was often critical of local traditions. With the exception of the remarkable Nepali column, described above, Stepping-Stones included few local authors, and his own negative characterization of local forms of Buddhism are found throughout his memoirs. For example, he described the Tamang community as “divorced from understanding [their religion] to an alarming degree. English-educated Tamangs were, in fact, alienated from the ethnic cult into which it had degenerated, and spoke disparagingly of ‘Lamaism’ as a corruption of Buddhism.”[73] While visiting Sikkim, he referred to the “disastrous decline in respect of doctrinal knowledge that had overtaken Sikkimese Buddhism in recent years,” and called for an “urgent” revival of Buddhism, in which perhaps the YMBA could assist.[74] Sangharakshita’s depiction of Himalayan Buddhism is indeed characteristic of the discourse of a Buddhist modernist, emphasizing textual knowledge and rationalism, and critiquing the “superstition” of local tradition. This may be why he struggled to find patronage, dismissive as he was of participating in “domestic rites.”[75]

As time passed in Kalimpong, Sangharakshita’s activities changed in accordance with local events. The lack of patronage opportunities by the late 1950s reflected the general pressure that many of the town’s local elite were under, due to changes in the trade route following the Chinese occupation of Tibet. This led monks and religious specialists to pursue alternative forms of income, including bartending and working in local cinemas as well as providing language and other forms of academic tuition, just as Sangharakshita had done.[76] Similarly, the headquarters of the YMBA shifted a number of times, as wealthy Tibetan refugees were buying up property as quickly as possible in preparation for moving to India permanently. His position as a foreigner in post-Independence India also led to complications, and over the years he was accused of being a spy and a Communist, and many of his foreign friends also left. He describes the situation at the beginning of the 1960s thus:

Kalimpong had indeed changed in the course of the last few years. The fresh influx of Tibetan refugees, the rumours of impending invasion by the Chinese, and the presence of troops and tanks on the streets, had all affected the atmosphere of the town. What was more, the authorities had become more suspicious of foreign visitors, especially Europeans and Americans, seemingly finding it difficult to believe that anybody could come to Kalimpong simply for the sake of the view. This meant that one’s movements were watched, one’s letters were intercepted, and though personally I had nothing to fear I was glad that I now had a British passport.[77]

This situation, along with an invitation to teach in England and ambitions to start a new Buddhist movement in the West, were behind his decision to return to England in 1964, where he founded the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (now the Triratna Buddhist Community), a new Buddhist tradition that now has centres in over sixty countries.[78] While his local activities are now largely forgotten, his time in Kalimpong set the stage for his further activities and contributed to the intellectual, social, and even economic networks that facilitated the development of his reputation as a teacher on a global scale.

Conclusion

The YMBAs of Darjeeling and Kalimpong represent an important link in the global history of modern Buddhism, where attempts to create translocal, inter-traditional identities and forms of Buddhist cosmopolitanism were part of multiple intellectual networks and projects. These networks and projects were inspired by the cracks that had appeared in colonial hegemonies with the assertion of local agency and by intellectuals and local elites who longed for agency in their societies. These local branches were therefore often tied to anti-colonial activity while they reasserted reformed local identities and practices.

While figures such as Pak Tséring and Sangharakshita were determined to create new global forms of affiliation by invoking connections between Buddhist practitioners, newly forming national “imagined communities” loomed large over their efforts.[79] Just as many Asian countries gained their independence, new forms of control and empire appeared. Communist China had little space for Buddhism as an ideology compatible with Marxist modernity, and a nervous India sought to consolidate its boundaries, while Buddhism was co-opted by new political movements that sought to actualise citizenship rights for all members of the new nation, most notably the Dalits. Despite two world wars, new boundaries were drawn up during the Cold War, and Darjeeling and Kalimpong, which had flourished on the boundaries between empires, saw a sharp decline due to the loss of trade and the closing of the border with China.[80] This also affected the transnational communities found in these cities. Many new Tibetan monasteries in exile were set up in the late 1950s, but these institutions did not have the same cosmopolitan aims as earlier Buddhist institutions in the area, which had emphasized social and economic connections across borders even from an early period. Instead, these new monasteries concentrated on survival and the preservation of cultural heritage, and were often used to reassert group identity rather than destabilise it. Buddhism became a powerful component of different forms of nationalism that developed throughout Asia at this time, and the opportunities presented by earlier associations with global goals, such as the YMBAs in the eastern Himalayas, no longer seemed as relevant or desirable. These forms of Buddhist cosmopolitanism, predicated on networks facilitated by movement and exchange, were limited by the drawing of boundaries, and ironically, by political independence in India and the new People’s Republic of China.

This does not mean that the legacies of Kazi Pak Tséring and Sangharakshita have been altogether forgotten. Their inter-traditional and global connections continue to be present in some limited ways. Sangharakshita has become an internationally known teacher. On a smaller scale, the Darjeeling YMBA School continues to provide education to junior students from some of the most economically marginalised sections of society at the site of its original home in Bhutia Busti. Its influence is felt beyond North Bengal as well. A few hours up the road and over the border in western Sikkim, the historical home of Pak Tséring, Chakung remains a booming small town, responsible for much of the ginger production in the state. Beyond the bazaar, up on a hill, there is a large Government Senior Secondary School. Behind this school, up a narrow lane, are two buildings that were once home to the YMBA and now form the Rev. Jinarasa Memorial Atis Dipankar Destitute Home. The Home is now managed by the Kripasaran Buddhist Mission, based in Bangladesh, which grew out of the Bengal Buddhist Association founded in 1892. Today it is affiliated with the branch of the mission in Darjeeling that was established in 1919 and is managed by a Himalayan Theravada monk named Pema Wangdi Sherpa.[81] In the mornings and afternoons, children swarm into the buildings for breakfast and dinner, and play football on the high school grounds next door. Distinct among these children are several who wear the bright orange robes of Theravada monks. These monks are from Bangladesh, and their presence at the humble orphanage remains as a vivid reminder of its unique transnational heritage, and the potentialities provided by a distinct moment in global Buddhist history.

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Notes:

[1] I would like to thank the many people who contributed to this article, especially Pak Tséring’s family and members of past and present YMBA communities and their families in Darjeeling, Kalimpong, and Sikkim; L. N. Sharma at the Sikkim State Archives and T. T. Gyatso, the Joint Director of the Cultural Affairs and Heritage Department of the Government of Sikkim, for their assistance in the archives; Ramani Herriarachchi, Lucky, and the librarians at the YMBA in Sri Lanka for their support locating Jinorasa in Colombo; Paul G. Hackett for generously sharing his findings on Jinorasa with me; the editors and reviewers who provided invaluable recommendations and suggestions; and my family for their assistance and advice.

[2] Clare Harris has discussed how the eastern Himalayas functioned as a museum for the study of the material culture of Tibet in The Museum on the Roof of the World: Art, Politics and the Representation of Tibet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).

[3] “Ceylon” was the name used for Sri Lanka up until the 1940s; in this paper I will use Ceylon for consistency, as it is the name used by the individuals discussed in the paper.

[4] In this paper, all Tibetan words are rendered in a phonetic transcription (using the THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription System, see http://www.thlib.org/reference/translit ... phonetics/ [Accessed on 21. July 2016]), except when referring to individuals who preferred a different spelling. This standardisation is necessary since there is still no universally accepted system for spelling Tibetan and Sikkimese Bhutia terms. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, after Europeans made contact, this was all the more problematic as many different transliterations were used for one person. For example, in archival materials, Pak Tséring is also referred to Fak Tsering, Phags Tshering, and sometimes only as Jinorasa, though local people did not use that name for him.

[5] For an overview of the international reach of the Rotary Club, see Brendan M. Goff, “The Heartland abroad: The Rotary Club’s Mission of Civic Internationalism,” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2008), http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/60765 [Accessed on 27. June 2016]. For a discussion of Rotary and its adaptation to and influence in Southeast Asia, see Su Lin Lewis, “Rotary International’s ‘Acid Test:’ Multi-ethnic Associational Life in 1930s Southeast Asia,” Journal of Global History 7, no. 2 (2012): 302–324.

[6] For more on foundations and functions of the YMCA, see Nina Mjagkji and Margaret Spratt, eds., Men and Women adrift: The YMCA and the YWCA in the City (New York: New York University Press, 1997).

[7] On the YMCA in Africa, see David Anthony, “Unwritten History: African Work in the YMCA of South Africa,” History in Africa 32, no. 1 (2005): 435–444. The YMCA also played an important role in parts of Asia that were not colonies, where local branches were set up by students returning from study in the US. On the YMCA in Republican China, see Charles A. Keller, “The Christian Student Movement, YMCAs, and Transnationalism in Republican China,” The Journal of American-East Asian Relations 13, no. 1 (2004): 55–80. Regarding the YMCA and its links with local forms of imperialism, see Jon Davidann, “Japanese YMCA Cultural Imperialism in Korea and Manchuria after the Russo-Japanese War,” The Journal of American-East Asian Relations 5, nos. 3–4 (1996): 255–276.

[8] Mark Frost, “‘Wider Opportunities:’ Religious Revival, Nationalist Awakening, and the Global Dimension in Colombo,” Modern Asian Studies 36, no. 4 (2002): 937–938.

[9] For a general history, see M. D. David, The YMCA and the Making of Modern India: A Centenary History (New Delhi: National Council of YMCAs of India, 1992).

[10] The YMCA serves as an important case study of American evangelical activity in Ian Tyrell, Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

[11] Chandra Mallampalli explores these local motives in Christians and Public Life in Colonial South Asia, 1863–1937 (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004). For a biography of a prominent Indian YMCA leader, see Susan Billington Harper, In the Shadow of the Mahatma: Bishop V. S. Azariah and the Travails of Christianity in British India (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999).

[12] A number of important studies outline the construction of modern Buddhism. These include, more generally, David McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); and, more specifically related to colonial constructions of Buddhism, Philip C. Almond, The British Discovery of Buddhism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Jeffrey Franklin, The Lotus and the Lion: Buddhism and the British Empire (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2008). On Asian responses to these constructions, see Anne Blackburn, Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010) and Richard Jaffe, “Seeking Shakyamuni: Travel and the Reconstruction of Japanese Buddhism,” Journal of Japanese Studies 30, no. 1 (2004) 65–96.

[13] Frost, “‘Wider Opportunities,’” 944.

[14] Stephen Prothero focuses on the life of Olcott in The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996).

[15] Frost, “‘Wider Opportunities,’” 956.

[16] For more on the life of Dharmapala and his complex position, see Steven Kemper, Rescued from the Nation: Anagarika Dharmapala and the Buddhist World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).

[17] See, for example, Mallika Wanigasundera, “A Story of Struggle and Achievement,” The Buddhist 68, nos. 3–4, (1997): 35–37.

[18] Wanigasundera, “A Story of Struggle and Achievement,” 35.

[19] Sumana Saparamadu provides a history of the publication in “The Buddhist,” in The Buddhist 68, nos. 3–4 (1997): 70–79.

[20] For a discussion of such an attempt, see Brian Bocking, “Flagging up Buddhism: Charles Pfoundes (Omoie Tetzunostzuke) among the International Congresses and Expositions, 1893–1905,” Contemporary Buddhism [14, no. 1 (2013): 17–37.

[21] Alicia Turner, Saving Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015).

[22] Juliane Schober, Modern Buddhist Conjunctures in Myanmar (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2011), 66–67, 73–75. For more on the political elements of the Burma YMBA, see Myo Oo, “The Covert Objective of YMBA (1906–1920) and Its Activities,” The Boundaries of History [Korea] 81 (2011): 107–128.

[23] Maharaja Thuthop Namgyel and Maharani Yeshe Dolma, “The History of Sikkim,” trans. Kazi Dawa Samdrup, 1908, MSS Eur E78, India Office Records and Private Papers, British Library, London. For more information on Sikkimese Buddhism and history, see Saul Mullard, Opening the Hidden Land: State Formation and the Construction of Sikkimese History (Leiden: Brill, 2011); Pranab Kumar Jha, History of Sikkim, 1817–1904: Analysis of British Policy and Activities (Calcutta: OPS Publishers, 1985); Sonam B. Wangyal, Sikkim and Darjeeling: Division and Deception (Jaigon: Sonam Wangyal, 2002); and Anna Balikci, Lamas, Shamans, and Ancestors: Village Religion in Sikkim (Leiden: Brill, 2008).

[24] Thierry Dodin, “The Observatory Hill in Darjeeling: Some Remarks on Space, Time, Power, and Religions,” in Tibetan Studies: Conference Proceedings from the 7th International Association of Tibetan Studies Conference, ed. Helmut Krasser et al. (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1997), 213–235.

[25] V. H. Coelho, Sikkim and Bhutan (Delhi: Indian Council for Cultural Relations, 1970), 67.

[26] Derek Waller, The Pundits: British Exploration of Tibet and Central Asia, 2nd ed. (Louisville: University of Kentucky) 193–194.

[27] Donald S. Lopez Jr., The Madman’s Middle Way: Reflections on Reality of the Tibetan Monk Gendun Chopel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 250.

[28] For more on Sidkeong Tulku and his Buddhist reforms see Toni Huber, The Holy Land Reborn: Pilgrimage and the Tibetan Reinvention of India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 281–282; and Berthe Jansen, “Monastic Guidelines (bCa’ yig) by Sidkeong Tulku: Monasteries, Sex, and Reform in Sikkim,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society [24, no. 4 (2014): 597–622.

[29] See other articles in this volume for more on these networks, as well as Clare Harris, Museum on the Roof of the World.

[30] For a broader discussion of such intellectuals, see Carole McGranahan, “In Rapga’s Library: The Texts and Times of a Rebel Tibetan Intellectual,” Cahiers d’Extreme-Asie 15 (2005): 253–274.

[31] On Dhammaloka, see Alicia Turner, Laurence Cox, and Brian Bocking, “Beachcombing, Going Native, and Freethinking: Rewriting the History of Early Western Buddhist Monastics,” Contemporary Buddhism 11, no. 2 (2010): 125–147.

[32] For more on this period, see Mthu stobs rnam rgyal and Ye shes sgrol ma, ’Bras ljongs rgyal rabs (Gangtok: Tsuklhakhang Trust, 2003), 117–118.

[33] Petition for adoption from Pemba Dichen to Political officer, “Adoption of Kazi Phag Tsering by Jeerung Dewan of Chakung Estate/ subsequent rejection of the adoption deed,” 10 August 1912, file no. 86 of 1912, General Section, Sikkim State Archives, Gangtok.

[34] Affidavit signed by Kazi Pak Tséring on 30 January 1919, private collection.

[35] There are no documents to provide information on what these abbreviations stand for, or where the name came from.

[36] For more on S. Mahinda Thero, see Pema Wangchuck Dorjee, “S. Mahinda Thero: The Sikkimese Who Gave Lankans Their Freedom Song,” Bulletin of Tibetology 44, nos. 1–2 (2008): 139–145.

[37] These recollections were gathered during interviews in Darjeeling, Kalimpong, and Sikkim in July 2013.

[38] Application submitted to Maharaja by Sonam Tshering, etc. related to Formation of the Young Men’s Buddhist Association, 12 July 1928, file no. 15 of 1924, serial 3, General Section, Government of Sikkim General Department, Sikkim State Archives, Gangtok. Signatories included Sonam Tséring Bhutia, Rinzing Dorjee Bhutia, Yonten Gyatso Kazi, and Passang Namgyal Kazi, among others.

[39] Ibid.

[40] Ibid.

[41] Pak Tséring, “News from India,” The Buddhist (August 1931): 84.

[42] This information appears on plaques in Hindi and English on the front of the building. They are dated 1995 Bikram Samvat, which corresponds to 1938 in several Nepali calendars.

[43] Log Book, Young Men’s Buddhist Association School, Darjeeling, India, 1935, Young Men’s Buddhist Association Darjeeling Archives, Darjeeling, North Bengal.

[44] One example of such a student was B. B. Gurung, now in his eighties, who served the last king of Sikkim as well as two successive democratic Sikkimese governments, and now acts as an advisor to the Chief Minister of Sikkim. B. B. Gurung, interview, July 2013.

[45] Heather Stoddard discusses this period of Chöpel’s life in Le mendiant de l’Amdo (Paris: Société d’ethnographie, 1985). She mentions Pak Tséring on page 173, calling him ‘gelong Pel Ji Norasa’ after Kirti rin po che, Dge ‘dun chos ‘phel gyi rab byed shabs btags ma (Dharamsala, India: Kirti byes pa grwa tshang, 1983), 61.

[46] Paul Hackett discusses Bernard’s mentions of and correspondence with the man he knew as Jinorasa in Theos Bernard, the White Lama: Tibet, Yoga, and American Religions Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012).

[47] S. K. Jinorasa to Theos Bernard, 26 January 1940, Theos Bernard Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

[48] Ibid.

[49] This is based on popular knowledge in Chakung, and was repeated to me by numerous members of the public as well as members of staff at the present school.

[50] Chakung School Log Book, Chakung Senior Secondary School Archives, Chakung, West Sikkim.

[51] Dick Dewan, Education in Sikkim: An Historical Retrospect, Pre-merger, and Post-merger Period (Kalimpong: Tender Buds’ Society, 2012), 200. In his final letter to Theos Bernard in December 1941, Pak Tséring writes that at that time the YMBA was managing thirteen schools. The exact locations of these schools is not provided, though the letterhead of the YMBA lists Darjeeling, Kalimpong Town School, Chakung School, Geyzing School, Rinchenpong Kaluk School, the Buddhist Girls’ School, Darjeeling, and the Orphans Home, Darjeeling. S. K. Jinorasa to Theos Bernard, 24 December 1941, Theos Bernard Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

[52] These suggestions were made by various members of the public in Chakung during interviews in July 2013.

[53] These narratives come from interviews carried out in Darjeeling and Sikkim, July 2013. I have kept the interviewees anonymous at their request, due to the sensitive nature of his death and political elements of his reputation.

[54] S. K. Jinorasa to Theos Bernard, 24 December 1941, Theos Bernard Collection, Bancroft Library, the University of California, Berkeley.

[55] McGranahan, “In Rapga’s library,” 274.

[56] The classic study of the events around this period and the beginning of democracy in Sikkim remains Sundanda K. Datta-Ray, Smash and Grab: Annexation of Sikkim (Delhi: Vikas, 1984).

[57] Sangharakshita, Facing Mount Kanchenjunga: An English Buddhist in the Eastern Himalayas (Birmingham: Windhorse Publications, 1991), 8.

[58] Sangharakshita has published multiple memoirs. The one that features his time in Kalimpong most prominently is Facing Mount Kanchenjunga (Glasgow: Windhorse Publications, 1991).

[59] For more on the revival of Buddhism in Nepal, see Sarah LeVine and David N. Gellner, Rebuilding Buddhism: The Theravada Movement in Twentieth-century Nepal (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005).

[60] Sangharakshita, Facing Mount Kanchenjunga, 37.

[61] Sangharakshita, Facing Mount Kanchenjunga, 38.

[62] Sangharakshita, Facing Mount Kanchenjunga, 38–39.

[63] For more on these figures and the Buddhist intellectual scene in Kalimpong, see Hackett, Theos Bernard, White Lama.

[64] A summary of Sangharakshita’s activities during this period can be found in his memoirs, which include five volumes. The volumes most pertinent to his time in Kalimpong are Facing Mount Kanchenjunga, In the Sign of the Golden Wheel: Indian Memoirs of an English Buddhist (Birmingham: Windhorse Publications, 1996), and Precious Teachers: Indian Memoirs of an English Buddhist (Birmingham: Windhorse Publications, 2007). While these volumes provide a fascinating overview of his life and interactions in Kalimpong, the information in them must be treated critically due to their genre, Sangharakshita’s privileged position as a white Buddhist in a newly post-colonial society, and the lack of other sources to confirm or challenge some of his arguments and representations. The information used in the sketch of his life and activities below is therefore information that has been backed up by popular records and local sources, including issues of the magazine Stepping-Stone and the newspapers The Tibet Mirror and The Himalayan Times.

[65] Sangharakshita, Facing Mount Kanchenjunga, 254–257.

[66] Sangharakshita laments that nothing came of these branches. Despite his best efforts to visit and organise lectures, he claims that once he left the area, local collaborators would not continue the work without him. Eventually, the Ajmer branch chose to become affiliated with the local Bengal Buddhist Association.

[67] Sangharakshita, Facing Mount Kanchenjunga, 63

[68] Sangharakshita, Facing Mount Kanchenjunga, 123–124.

[69] These events are outlined in Sangharakshita, Precious Teachers.

[70] Sangharakshita, Facing Mount Kanchenjunga, 463–464.

[71] Sangharakshita, In the Sign of the Golden Wheel, 183–184.

[72] This friendship was detailed in Sangharakshita, Precious Teachers.

[73] Sangharakshita, Facing Mount Kanchenjunga, 32.

[74] Sangharakshita, Facing Mount Kanchenjunga, 213

[75] Sangharakshita, Moving Against the Stream: The Birth of a New Buddhist Movement (Birmingham: Windhorse Publications, 2003), 128.

[76] I thank the anonymous reviewer for providing me with a broader reference of these activities found in Beatrice D. Miller, “Lamas and Laymen: A Historico-functional Study of the Secular Integration of Monastery and Community,” (PhD diss., University of Washington, Seattle, 1958), 224, http://search.proquest.com/docview/301892426 [Accessed on 27. June 2016].

[77] Sangharakshita, Precious Teachers, 169.

[78] Regarding Sangharakshita’s activities after he left Kalimpong, see Sangharakshita, Moving Against the Stream; Alan Sponberg, “TBMSG: A Dhamma Revolution in Contemporary India,” in Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia, ed. Christopher S. Queen and Sallie B. King (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 73–112; and Martin Baumann, “Work as Dharma Practice: Right Livelihood Cooperatives of the FWBO,” in Engaged Buddhism in the West, ed. Christopher S. Queen (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000), 372–393.

[79] The nation as an imagined community here is adopted from Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 2006).

[80] The impact of the loss of trade on Kalimpong in particular is discussed in Tina Harris, Geographical Diversions (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2013).

[81] More on the Bengal Buddhist Association can be found in Rama Kundu, “‘In Thine Immeasurable Mercy and Goodness:’ Buddha in Tagore’s Imagination,” in Studies on Rabindranath Tagore, vol. 1., ed. Mohit Kumar Ray (New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2004), 215. The current Mission’s website is at http://kbm1.wordpress.com/about-us/ [Accessed on 3. July 2015].

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Part 1 of 3

Manifest Destiny: Christianity and American Imperialism [The World's Parliament of Religions 1893]
Excerpt from Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Columbian Exposition
by Judith Snodgrass

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-- Manifest Destiny: Christianity and American Imperialism [The World's Parliament of Religions 1893], Excerpt from Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Columbian Exposition, by Judith Snodgrass

-- Parliament of the World's Religions, by Wikipedia

-- Parliament of [the] World Religions, by David Livingstone

From the time of the Crystal Palace Exposition in London in 1851 the great expositions of the nineteenth century were preeminently displays of material and technical progress. The Chicago fair, symbolized as it was by the steel-supported structures of the White City and the engineering genius of the great Ferris wheel, was no exception. What made the Columbian Exposition unique was the inclusion of the "Auxiliary Congresses," an exhibition of the spiritual, intellectual, and social progress of mankind. The largest and most acclaimed of the Auxiliary Congresses was the World's Parliament of Religions, which not only epitomized the antimaterialist theme of the congresses but enshrined the motivating force of them all, American Protestant Christianity.

American rivalry with Europe might have been satisfied by an exhibition of material progress, but this material progress was itself subsidiary to and dependent on America's distinctive society and its resulting institutions. "The freest land must in the end create the most perfect machinery .... The American railroad is a product of the Constitution of the United States,"1 and the Constitution, in turn, derived from the ideals of freedom, equality, and self-determination of Protestant Christianity brought to the New World by the early colonists.

The Columbian Exposition, celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus's voyage, was permeated with a revived sense of America's predestined mission and an awareness of America's special place in the unfolding of Providential history. As Merril Edwardes Gates, delegate to the Auxiliary Congresses, explained in his paper "The Significance to Christianity of the Discovery and the History of America," God had kept the American continent undefiled until "the Reformation had taught the Christian world afresh the value of the individual man, standing erect, the Bible in his hand, fearless before priest and king, reverent before God .... When a new light for the social and political life of mankind began to ray out from the open Bible in the hands of Luther, God opened the way to the new continent."2

God had planted the seed of the new religion in the pristine soil of the new continent, had chosen the people and the government to bring it to fruition,3 and had bestowed upon the people of America the duty to share the light of the Gospel and the benefits of the civilization "springing into life on the continent ... here to grow until it should overshadow the kingdoms of the world."4 Providence had ordained the Americanization of the world. The Auxiliary Congresses within the Chicago exposition demonstrated this interdependence of material progress, American civilization, and religion. The two hundred distinct congresses organized under twenty general departments "considering the greatest themes in which mankind is interested"5 named the intellectual categories through which material progress was manifested.6

The World's Parliament of Religions, in spite of its name and the international recognition it subsequently acquired, was essentially an American event, both in its vision of evangelical mission and in its predominant concern with domestic issues. The Parliament grew out of a liberal Christian vision of U.S. Christian ecumenism (i.e., an ecumenical union of the Judeo-Christian religious communities of the United States), a bid to assimilate the rapidly increasing number of immigrants from diverse religious backgrounds into the Protestant ideal. It was a statement of Christian confidence, a bid for liberal Christian reform within the United States, and an exercise in reinforcing the dominance of Protestant Christianity in response to the rapidly changing social environment of the late nineteenth century.7 The original proposal dealt exclusively with these essentially domestic issues but, once accepted, it was developed as the World's Parliament of Religions, an international event to match the international scope of the exposition of which it was an intrinsic part. The original domestic emphasis remained, but the Parliament also became a platform for the expansionist aspects of the American Protestant ideal, the "messianic heritage." In the early years of the colony, the sense of evangelical purpose justified continental expansion westward. In 1893, with American consciousness of its Pacific future revived by the takeover of Hawaii, the obligation was to share the light of the Gospel and American ideals with "those who are nearest to them but are without God and without hope in the world."8 In the less generous terms of historical reality, the messianic heritage appeared to demand the Christian conquest of Asia.9

Asian delegates to the Parliament had long been familiar with aggressive evangelism. They anticipated its presence at the Parliament and came prepared to deal with it. It nevertheless contributed to the shaping of the representation of Buddhism by demanding reiteration of Buddhist apologetics, forcing the discussion of Buddhism toward topics raised by Christian attack. Far more difficult for the Buddhist delegates to accommodate was the essentially American preoccupation of the Parliament that set the parameters of the discussion. The themes suggested and officially endorsed by the organizing committee were directed toward encouraging Judeo-Christian tolerance in the United States, combating growing interest in materialist philosophy, and uniting the various religious communities to solve the social problems of the United States. The aim of the Parliament was to demonstrate the essential unity of human aspiration. In this project, the various religions were assumed to be related by a shared dependence on a patriarchal God and their hierarchically apportioned share in his revelation. These were Christo-centric assumptions of the essentially theistic nature and function of religion into which Buddhism could not easily be accommodated. The aspects of Buddhism that could be discussed at the Parliament were restricted by this American and Christian agenda of the program. The representation of Japanese Buddhism was constrained by the role assigned to it in a discourse generated by the religious debates and intellectual assumptions of nineteenth-century America.

The relations of power mapped in the previous chapter -- New World challenge to Europe; the tension between the dominant West and the Orient; dominant white America's attempt to preserve the status quo against the challenge from social changes in the late nineteenth century; Japan's bid to disassociate itself from other Asian nations and establish itself in the international arena -- also traversed the congress on religions. In spite of the organizers' professions of tolerance, of respect for other beliefs, and the stated aim of bringing about international understanding of religious ideas, the World's Parliament of Religions also provided evidence to support the themes of Social Darwinism so evident in the main exhibition. The Parliament, the first great attempt to bring together religious specialists of the world, was also a sideshow, an ethnological display of the various religions of the world. The non-Christian religions played a role parallel to the exotic displays of the Midway Plaisance and were similarly arranged as "object lessons" pointing to Protestant Christianity as the culmination of religious evolution.

The World's Fair Auxiliary Congresses

The Auxiliary Congresses were the inspiration of Chicago lawyer and civic leader Charles C. Bonney. His vision was of a series of conferences on matters of spiritual, intellectual, and social concern of the time, "a series of congresses for the consideration of the greatest themes in which mankind is interested."10 His initial proposal, launched in the Statesman Magazine, September 20, 1889, argued that "the crowning glory of the World's Fair" should not be the material and industrial achievements of man, however magnificent that display may be. "Something still higher and nobler is demanded by the enlightened and progressive spirit of the new age." His proposal was for a series of international conventions in the areas of "government, jurisprudence, finance, science, literature, education and religion," discussed not by academics but by practitioners, "statesmen, jurists, financiers, scientists, literati, teachers, theologians." It was to be more widely representative of "peoples, nations, tongues" than "any assemblage which has ever yet been convened." The benefits as he initially perceived them would be nothing less than to "unite the enlightened people of the earth in a general cooperation for the great ends for which human society is organized." Although in Bonney's opinion "it would not be easy to exaggerate the powerful impetus given by [the material exposition] to commerce and all the arts by which toil is lightened, the fruits of labour increased, and the comforts of life augmented," the benefits of the congresses would be "higher and more conducive to the welfare of mankind."11

Bonney spoke for the United States, but his sentiments also reflected the particular concern of Chicago, the brash new commercial center that had very recently established its first university, to counter its aggressively commercial image. The congress theme, "Not Things but Men; Not Matter but Mind," stressed this reordering of priorities. Barrows, opening the Evangelical Alliance, observed that Chicago, "celebrated for its big warehouses, big railroads, big newspapers, big expectations and big achievements," would henceforth be known for its equally impressive spiritual achievement.12 Addressing the Asian delegates, he said, "I want you to think of Chicago not as the home of the rudest materialism but as a temple where men cherish the loftiest idealism."13 The Congress on Religions was not funded by the churches but by the U.S. government and the commercial community. It was, therefore, a platform for America rather than for Christianity, and the prominence of the World's Parliament of Religions reflected the centrality of religion in the American national vision.

The Chicago organizers planned to display the full progress of man. Here "the most comprehensive and brilliant display of man's material progress," the usual object of an international exhibition, was complemented by an equally extensive display of intellectual, social, and moral progress. There were congresses covering "all areas of intellectual and moral concern," the official history by Rossiter Johnson records, listing in order by way of example, "women, medicine, temperance, commerce, literature, education, religion, art, philosophy and evolution." (Other lists include such diverse subjects as the public press, engineering, government and law reform, religion and Sunday rest, public health, and agriculture.) The message of the Auxiliary Congresses was that America had reached maturity not only in industry and commerce but in social, intellectual, and spiritual development as well and stood poised to lead the world into the twentieth century.

Bonney expressed the millennial splendor of his vision, the United States as the culmination of post-Renaissance progress, at the opening of the first of the congresses on May 15, 1893: "A single week of years stands between us and the twentieth century. If the causes now in operation shall go on unchecked, the world will witness in these seven years the crowning glories of more than seven centuries of human progress."14 He declared the event formally open with the hope: "To make the whole world one in sympathy; to make the whole world one in mental aim; to make the whole world one in moral power; learning and virtue passports to all lands."15

The sincerity of Bonney's desire for universal peace and brotherhood cannot be questioned. He was himself a Swedenborgian and spoke as representative of the goodwill of liberal Christianity. However, as any number of supposedly liberal papers showed, the assumption of a single, uniform human nature upon which this attitude of Eurocentric humanism is based leads too easily to interpreting the undeniable observable differences in the thought and action of other peoples as irrational or false versions of one's own -- at the very least, as imperfect, preliminary attempts at achieving the same ends.16

The World's Parliament of Religions and Messianic Mission

The Parliament, though only one of the many Auxiliary Congresses, was generally perceived to be "the splendid crown," the epitome of the concept. Its prominence depended on more than religion's obvious position as the ultimate expression of "spirit," the natural opposition to mundane "matter" and the material world, the spiritual balance to the gross materiality of the general exposition that was so much commented on. The Parliament was as fundamental to the expression of American aspirations as the White City itself. Domestically, the Columbian Exposition was viewed by Americans as both Rome, the culmination of republican democracy, and the new Jerusalem, the site of religious renewal. Both images were intrinsic to the "enduring Protestant American dream" which was the dominant statement of the quadricentennial celebration.17 America was not simply the site of post-Reformation progress and achievement, but also the divinely appointed agent of its universal dissemination. Bonney, opening the Congress on Women, introduced this recurring theme: "The nineteenth century, richer in manifold wonders than any which has preceded it in the august procession of the ages, crowns its greatest achievements by establishing in the world the sublime idea of a universal fraternity of learning and virtue. This idea, long cherished by the illuminati of every clime, descends at last from the luminous mountains of thought to the fertile fields of action, and enters upon the conquest of the world."18

Bonney here articulated the ideal of American mission and the fundamental problem of American imperialism, the tension between the ideal of converting the world through a self-denying "messianic example," providing a living demonstration of the advantages of its civilization that would inspire emulation and desire for membership in the union, and the more aggressive alternative, "messianic intervention," which was associated with the European model of imperialism that America, as a former colony, rejected. Evangelism -- offering the gift of Light -- provided a justification for territorial expansion and very frequently aided in the process. The quadricentennial celebration of Columbus's voyage revitalized the American Christian sense of predestined mission. America, the theater for achieving millennial perfection, was the model for the rest of the world, the "chief motor" for the conversion of the world to Protestantism.19 Ideally, then, the mission depended on realizing the objective within the United States.

The first problem with this vision was that, as Seager remarks, "the World's Parliament of Religions marked the passing of an era in which the United States could be called, however inaccurately, a Protestant or even a Christian nation."20 The optimism of these ideals was in contrast with the reality of increasing labor opposition to the growing power of industrial capitalists, disruption due to the breakdown of the traditional rural economy, the racial problems of recently emancipated blacks (whose form of worship was not orthodox although they were Christian and even Protestant), and the urban slums teeming with Jewish and Roman Catholic immigrants. While liberal and fundamentalist Christians attempted to consolidate their position, Roman Catholics, Jews, and black Americans were staking a claim as legitimate heirs to the prerogatives of the Republic. 21

The visions that emerged from the rhetoric of the Parliament -- "a blueprint for the kingdom of God on earth," a "latter day Pentecost," the "New Jerusalem," "the Babel tongues of the world ... coming back to speak the one dialect of Heaven"22 -- are those of subsuming and assimilating all religions within the dominant Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. American delegates spoke of "manufacturing a republic -- taking the black material of humanity and building it up into noble men and women; taking the red material, wild with every savage instinct, and making it into respectable men."23 With the increased immigration of the late nineteenth century, American society similarly, at least in theory, transformed immigrants from diverse cultures into a citizenry supporting and enhancing the essentially Protestant ethos of a Christian American republic. The guiding principle of the Parliament, in which the majority of organizers and delegates was of the dominant Protestant groups, was that all the religions of the world would find their completion and fulfillment in the spiritual values of Protestant Christianity.

One of the problems at this time, however, was the failure of the ideal within the United States itself. The difficulty, from the point of view of at least one Protestant leader, was not just the increase in the volume of immigration but the different type of people involved by this time. In a paper on "The Problems of Our Multifarious Population and Their Probable Solution," the Reverend Wm. C. Roberts, D.D. LL.D., wrote:

If it were made up, as in former years, of people from the British Isles, Holland, Germany, France and Northern Europe, the increase in numbers would probably excite no special alarm, for multitudes of them spoke our language, professed the Christian religion, admired our civil and social institutions, revered our Bible and respected our Sabbath. They came in order to be of us. But those who flock hither in these days are largely different in character and purpose. They are Jews from Russia, Italians from the Siciles, Bohemians, many of whom are of the baser sort, Poles, long taught to dislike every kind of regularly constituted government, Hungarians looked upon as revolutionaries, Armenians, Greeks and Bulgarians who have had the best elements of their nature stamped out by the iron heel of Turkey, British trade-unionists, French socialists, Austrian nihilists, German anarchists, and idol worshippers from China, India and the Islands of the Sea.24

The speaker clearly associated religious diversity with the social problems of the time, and the "material of humanity" he described was less malleable than he desired. The presence of these large numbers of Jews and Roman Catholics in the society, if not the nihilists, socialists, and "idol worshippers," forced debate on the interpretation of the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion. Did it allow a denial of God? Expressed from a Protestant point of view in the previous century, the controversy had been whether the Constitution guaranteed freedom from all old religions and the establishment of a new universal (Christian) faith, or the freedom to persist in a false or partial religion until the establishment of the universal reign of Christ on earth.25 Both of these interpretations assumed that all religions would be assimilated into Protestantism. This was, after all, part of the perceived reason for the existence of America. It was the site of the growth of the new revelation and the place of refuge for all those who sought its consolations. Under the still dominant Protestant ideal, as the Reverend Roberts put it, they came in order to be of us.

Bonney's Vision: The Origin of the Plan

The Parliament, as it was originally conceived by Bonney, was essentially a Christian conference, a gathering of the various religious communities of the United States, which, as a generous gesture of brotherhood and a recognition of the growing importance of Judaism in America, included believers in Jehovah as "Old Testament Christians."26 The Christian parameters of the discussion are clear from the first four of the twenty-two themes proposed for discussion, which were: "a. The idea of God, its influences and consolations. b. The evidences of the existences of God, especially those which are calculated to meet the agnosticism of the present time. c. That evils of life should be shunned as sins against God. d. That the moral law should be obeyed as necessary to human happiness, and because it is the will of the Creator."

The capital "G" and references to God as "Creator" guaranteed the Christian connotations of the term. Another of the proposed themes demanded acceptance of the Christian revelation, the "influx from God into the mind of every man teaching that there is a God and that he should be worshipped and obeyed." The final and culminating theme indicated the Judeo-Christian limits of Bonney's liberal vision of the Parliament: "That those who believe in these things may work together for the welfare of mankind, notwithstanding they may differ in the opinions they hold respecting God, His revelation and manifestation; and that such fraternity does not require the surrender of the points of difference. The Christian believing in the supreme divinity of Christ, may so unite with the Jew who devoutly believes in the Jehovah of Israel; the Quaker with the High Church Episcopalian; the Catholic with the Methodist; the Baptist with the Unitarian, etc."27

There can be no question of Buddhists being included among "those who believe" in Bonney's vision. His concern was for the religious tolerance among the major religious groups represented in the United States in the late nineteenth century and for contemporary, local problems, which included, as point b noted, increasing agnosticism. The proposals for topics for discussion were all concerned with the value of religion as a social force in North America. They specifically excluded discussion of doctrine except where "common aims and common grounds for union may be set forth." Among his proposals he stressed the importance of religion for "virtuous and pure" family life and in answering "the alleged prevalence of infidelity." For Bonney, the substantial fruits of sincere religion included "improved personal character, better business methods; nearly all works of charity; improved domestic order; greater public peace" (point j). The "indispensability of the weekly rest day," another of the proposed topics, was a matter of such contention among Americans at the time that the financial viability of the exposition was threatened by protests against opening the exposition on Sundays and an entire congress was eventually given over to the issue. Temperance was also considered of sufficient importance to deserve a separate congress.

Regardless of this domestic focus, several of the proposals were of direct and particular concern to the Buddhists. The first was the basic assumption that religion must necessarily be theistic. Japanese Buddhists targeted this as the point to which they must pay particular attention.28 It was a familiar point of Buddhist vulnerability. Because Buddhism was not based on theistic principles, it risked being excluded from the category of religion altogether and linked instead with Western philosophic atheism, an association they vehemently protested. Because the proposal actually listed this as an important point "calculated to meet the agnosticism of the present time," there was a real risk that Buddhism would be called upon, as it frequently was in missionary literature of the time, to stand as the example of the fundamental error of such a view.29 On the other hand, it was precisely the promotion of Buddhism as an example of the viability of a nontheistic system of ethics that had brought it prestige and respect. Consequently, point p, "the actual harmony of science and religion; and the origin and nature of the conflict between them," was also of particular relevance to the Japanese Buddhist delegates. This was a critical issue in Christian debate during the second half of the nineteenth century. A religion that depends on revelation was incompatible with science's denial of the supernatural. The form of Bonney's proposal here suggests that by the time of the Parliament, liberal Christians at least had resolved the issue. Nevertheless, it was on this point that the Japanese Buddhists perceived Christianity to be most vulnerable. Their confidence was increased by the knowledge that Western scholars had already established the harmony of Buddhism with science and modern philosophy.

North American Ecumenism to Christian Universalism

Once the initial proposal was accepted, the Parliament was organized by a committee of sixteen representatives of the various religious communities of the United States-including one Catholic archbishop and one rabbi -- under the direction of the Reverend John Henry Barrows, D.D., a liberal Christian pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago.30 As chairman, Barrows exerted a strong influence over the organization of the Parliament, particularly in the management of the non-Christian religions. He personally hosted the Asian delegates, edited and in several cases delivered their papers, and after the Parliament compiled and published the official version of its history, an act that has consequences in knowledge of the event to the present time.31 Although Bonney's American and Christian vision of the World's Parliament of Religions still formed the core of the proceedings, under Barrows and his committee the event was expanded, given a universal scope in keeping with the world's exposition context. In this process, the Protestant Christian ideal of Westward progress was extended beyond the bounds of continental America to the vision of universal Christianity.

The Parliament, as described in its published objectives,32 sought answers not simply to domestic issues but to "the great problems of the present age," although even here the centrality of America is apparent in the repetition of Bonney's listing of, as examples, "temperance, labour, education, wealth and poverty." It aimed not just for domestic harmony but for "securing permanent international peace." The World's Parliament of Religions had grown from Bonney's vision of a fellowship of liberal, humanist theists to a great international event bringing "together in conference, for the first time in history, the leading representatives of the great historic religions of the world." He specifically desired representatives not simply of Judaism but of "the Brahman, Buddhist, Confucian, Parsee, Mohammedan" faiths as well. In this expanded vision the heathen were now welcome, but for what purpose? The text adopted for the World's Parliament of Religions had been suggested by the Reverend H. Adler, chief rabbi of the British Empire: "Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us?"33 It confirmed Bonney's ecumenical vision for the United States of America but did nothing to accommodate Buddhists.

Although representatives of most religions, Christian and non-Christian, came from all over the world, the Parliament was essentially an American Christian event. Foreign Christians played their part by contributing to ecumenical discussion, by clarifying points of difference between denominations, and, most important, by simply coming from all corners of the world and thereby giving witness to Christianity's claim for universality.34 Non-Christian delegates were invited for a number of reasons, none of which, in spite of high-minded protests to the contrary, involved a serious desire to learn what they might offer. The stated aim, "To inquire what light each religion has afforded, or may afford to other religions of the world,"35 must be weighed against the chairman's reassurance that "[t]he non-Christian world ... has nothing to add to the Christian creed."36 The aim of the organizers might more accurately have been rendered to the general public as it was to the Christian congregation: "To inquire into what light Christianity has afforded, or may afford, to other religions in the world." After his experience of the Parliament, Barrows, now claiming to know Oriental religions, "both ideal and practical," concluded that "the very best which is in them, the very best which these well meaning men have shown to us, is often a reflection of Christianity, and that which they lack, and the lack is very serious, is what the Christian Gospel alone can impart."37

Quite clearly, when Christianity was used as a measure of worth, not only did other religions necessarily fail to measure up but, to the extent that they did, they were unoriginal and derivative. Anything Barrows admired in Buddhism he assumed to be the result of its contact with Christianity. The idea that a new universal faith, a new religion for the twentieth century, might emerge out of the debate, an idea that Asian delegates spoke of frequently, convinced that they did indeed have "light" that they could contribute, was not envisaged by the chief promoters of the Parliament. They believed that "the elements of such a religion are already contained in the Christian ideal and the Christian scriptures." Their attitude allowed for reinterpretation and reform within Christianity but afforded no opening for intellectual input from Asian religions.

Exhibiting Spiritual Progress

The nineteenth-century study of comparative religion, whatever it may be now, was unashamedly Christo-centric and closely allied with the imperative of Christian missions to know the enemy. The presence of non-Christian religions was, of course, essential to give the event its international status. As Barrows himself recognized, "A World's Parliament of Religions in which only a few were interested would be a misnomer."38 Asian religions were also essential as a contrast: "[S]uperiority cannot be shown without comparison."39 Their presence was deemed necessary to display the relative excellence of Christianity. The difference in the quality of the exhibits would demonstrate the progress of Christianity.

The evolutionary lesson of the fair, the place of each nation in an international hierarchy, was most definitely also to be drawn from the Parliament. Ninety-seven nations participated in the Columbian Exposition, including "aborigines from the arctic circle and the Pacific" and other such materially undeveloped countries as Venezuela and the French Congo. The organizers had decided to arrange the exhibits throughout the fair in categories rather than by nation so that the relative merit of entries from different nations placed side by side would be apparent. It was considered one of the valuable lessons of the fair, Johnson records, that each nation could see its position in the hierarchy thus displayed.40 At the World's Parliament of Religions "each country was, in the same spirit, invited to exhibit their [sic] religions."41 Or as Barrows himself expressed it, employing the frequently used metaphor of reflections of the light of truth, the Parliament aimed "to study all the exhibits in the spectrum."42 The result was that the "products displayed by the United States, Great Britain and Germany were immensely superior."43 Spiritual superiority was established through the dubious authority of democratic competition and scientific comparison. Note that the claim to immense superiority is restricted to the three Protestant nations of the West, explicitly connecting material advancement with the Protestant Christian vision of spiritual progress.

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Part 2 of 3

Exhibiting the Exotic

The Parliament was a microcosm of the fair. Its exotic delegates provided the Midway Plaisance component, the object lesson in evolution, the color, entertainment, light relief, the picturesque, and like the Midway, the Parliament drew large crowds. Attendance apparently exceeded expectations as a second hall had to be opened to accommodate repeat sessions. The Hall of Columbus alone held four thousand people and was regularly packed. Newspapers reported, however, that there was little discrimination in the audience's response to Asian speakers, and much waving of handkerchiefs and throwing hats into the air -- more the behavior of a music hall than of an academic conference. Indian delegate Vivekananda's opening words, "Brothers and sisters of America," brought on four minutes of applause and cheering. Vivekananda and the other photogenic and articulate South Asian delegate, Anagarika Dharmapala, the Buddhist delegate from Ceylon, were lionized in the press, but the coverage gave much more space to their appearance and theatrics than to the content of their papers. The Parliament was part of the fair and the Asian delegates were a spectacular attraction. Neglect of more informative if less outgoing speakers on Hinduism such as Manilal D'Vivedi44 suggests that these expressions of brotherhood were what the audience wanted to hear rather than information on Oriental thought. The other question that arises is just how much of any unamplified speech would be heard in an auditorium of that size. Front-row seats were reserved for registered participants. For many of the general public in attendance the visual spectacle must have been the principal satisfaction, and in spite of actually having been present at the Parliament and witnessing the pageantry and the sincerity of the delivery, their knowledge of the content of the speeches would have depended on the press reports and the published record: the voices of the Asian delegates, edited and interpreted by their Christian hosts.

Just how important was the carnival aspect of the Asian presence and how calculated was it? W. F. [William Fairfield] Warren, president of Boston University, wrote in response to the idea of the Parliament, apparently confirming a suggestion made to him in Barrows's letter, that "even a museum of idols and objects used in ceremonial worship would attract beyond any other museum. Models and illustrations of the great temples of the world and of the world's history would be in a high degree instructive. Add to these things the living word of living teachers, and the whole world may well pause to listen."45

Is it mere coincidence that Barrows subsequently invited these "living teachers" of exotic religions? Or that the official record was profusely illustrated with photographs of ritual objects, great temples, and Oriental practitioners? Of the nonportrait illustrations only twelve are Christian, and these are the great monuments: St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, St. Peter's in Rome, and the cathedrals of St. Petersburg, Worcester, Milan. Non-Christian religions are also represented by major buildings, among which is the Pearl Mosque in Delhi, Mandalay Pagoda, and the Temple of Heaven in Peking. There are rather more photographs of "heathen" curiosities such as those labeled "The Burning Ghat at Calcutta," "A Group of Fakirs," "A Chinese Idol," "Hindus at Devotion," and of assorted poorly dressed Oriental devotees. The abiding impression from thumbing through the volume is one of contrast between the cathedrals soaring toward heaven and the earthbound and materially backward heathen. The illustrated history echoed the message of the Midway, the object lesson in the transition from the primitive to the sublime.

The Congress as Parliament

The imbalance of the relationship between the American Protestant hosts and the non-Christian guests was simultaneously concealed and strengthened by the conception of the event as a "parliament." This is a powerful metaphor, carrying as it does the fundamental political relationships of majority government and the minority right to be represented and heard and to contribute to the legislative process, which is ultimately under the control of the majority. The hierarchical relationship of religions, which was the lesson of the sideshow aspect of the event, was reinforced by the lesson of this reference to democratic structures. Christianity, which had an overwhelming majority of delegates, was clearly cast in the role of universal religion, a message also projected by the presence of Christian delegates from such far-flung outreaches as Africa, Japan, and India. Buddhism, alone or as part of the larger Oriental, non-Christian contingent, and in spite of its actual vast Asian following, was here cast as a minority party. The function of its delegates was principally to be present, validating the democratic principle of representation -- this was the World's Parliament after all -- and to illustrate the democratic respect for the right of minority groups to be heard.46

The equality implied by calling the event a "parliament" upset orthodox sections of the Christian community and forced Barrows to clarify the intentions behind his expansive rhetoric of brotherhood. The Anglican archbishop of Canterbury [Edward White Benson] led the objection. He wrote refusing to participate on the grounds that he did not understand how the Christian religion, "which is the one religion," could be regarded as a member of a parliament of religions "without assuming the equality of the other intended members and the parity of their position and claims."47 In response Barrows explained that the term was certainly not intended to imply that the various religions were equal in doctrine or truth. Calling the event a "parliament" in no way compromised the Christian claim to superiority and unique revelation. It was only intended to guarantee the parliamentary privilege of equal right to speak and to present opinions. "There was no suggestion on the part of the Christian speakers that Christianity was to be thought of on the same level with other religions."48

In the most commonly reproduced photographs of the Parliament the Asian delegates appear as a handful of colorfully attired representatives contrasting with the sober, dark-suited Christians.49 Their prominent position at the center front of the stage makes the most of their presence, bestowing an impression of religious diversity. Barrows describes the "most picturesque and pleasing spectacle" of the gathering on stage and delights in the "colour and movement" of the Oriental delegates with their "many coloured raiment" and especially the "most gorgeous group," the Chinese and Japanese, "arrayed in costly silk vestments of all the colours of the rainbow."50 Consciously or not, the contrast among the Parliamentary delegates paralleled the planned contrast between the serious side of the fair, the White City, and the entertainment and amusement appeal of the Midway Plaisance.

The Invitation and the Limits of Tolerance

The Parliament, in the expansive terms of the call for papers, was to be a gathering of "the leading representatives of the great historic religions of the world, to show to man in the most impressive way, what and how many important truths the various religions hold and teach in common." It aimed to "promote and deepen the spirit of human brotherhood among religious men of diverse faiths, through friendly converse and mutual good understanding, while not seeking to foster the temper of indifferentism, and not striving to achieve any formal and outward unity."51 Letters of response to the idea suggest that this vision was considered disturbingly liberal by considerable segments of the society, those whom even Barrows disparagingly described as "good bigots who imagine that God will not cease working until he has made all men Presbyterians."52 But even the liberal view uncompromisingly placed Christianity at the pinnacle of evolutionary development that all other religions were destined to reach. In Barrows's words, "[I]t is not true that all religions are equally good; but neither is it true that all religions except one are no good at aIL" The invitation, for all its professions of mutual respect, was to come and be measured: "Christianity ... will assign to each its place in that work of evangelical preparation which the elder doctors discern in heathenism itself and which is not yet completed."53

Hierarchies of Race and the Light

Embedded here are the interrelated assumptions that there is but one God whose plan unfolds in the progress of the world, and his revelation is universal, but unequally bequeathed. "God hath not left himself without witness" was a constant refrain, elaborated on by metaphors of Light -- "the white light of Heaven," "the Light of Truth" -- all implying that other religions are but a dim reflection of the Christian Light of the World. Christianity was "the sun among candles." Christians who "have the full light of the Cross should bear brotherly hearts towards all those who grope in a dimmer illumination."54 The "twilight" state of others was variously explained. In Bonney's opening address we find that "God necessarily reveals himself differently to a child than to a man, to a philosopher than to one who cannot read." God gave two revelations, one in nature, which historically has been the preoccupation of the "Oriental" religions, and the higher revelation, the Christian revelation of the word.55 A scientifically expressed variation on the theme was overtly racist: the revelation was given equally to all but was "broken into many coloured fragments by the prisms of men." Non-Christian races were unable to perceive the truth or to hold on to its brilliance. The white light shone upon them was defracted into the many hues of partial truths, "gropings after God."56 One of the most frequently stated objects of the Parliament of Religions was to "change this many-coloured radiance back to the white light of heavenly truth."57

Acts 10:35 -- "God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to Him" -- was also quoted with great enthusiasm as an example of Christian magnanimity and tolerance. It seems to have been forgotten that it was a reply to Peter's question of whether the Gentiles could receive the Holy Spirit and offers only that men of all races may be converted. It has nothing to say about Christian tolerance for other religions to exist. The liberal inspiration of the Parliament notwithstanding, it was a Christian event both in the proselytizing aspirations of people such as Barrows and in the unquestioned assumptions upon which it was based.

While Barrows quite understandably presented the Parliament as welcoming and attractive to non-Christian delegates in the official invitation intended for international distribution, in publications intended to circulate among Christians -- and in sermons before his congregation -- he was less guarded and spoke more specifically of the function of the Parliament in converting the world to Christianity. News of one such sermon reached Japan with serious consequences for the Japanese delegation. 58 Conservative Japanese already opposed to the idea of Buddhist participation at the Parliament were confirmed in their suspicions that the event was a Christian trap and that non-Christian religions, far from getting a fair hearing, would be used.59 Supporters of the delegation countered that such suspicions showed lack of confidence in Buddhism. They did concede that the circumstances of the Parliament, a Christian event held in a Christian country and controlled by a Christian chairman, were less than ideal, but that, properly managed, the benefits for Buddhism in Japan could be profound and that the risks were well worth taking.60

Barrows's sermon focused Buddhist rhetoric on the need to combat Christian imperialism. From the Japanese delegates' point of view, because Barrows had declared war, it was now possible to plead for support in terms of attack. The Parliament was an opportunity to "make the truth known and assail the evil teaching." Employing the rhetoric of Social Darwinism, they argued that Japan must send a delegation for the sake of Buddhism and for the sake of Japan. "The survival of the fittest is the general trend of society," they argued, and Japanese Buddhists had an obligation to the civilization of the future. Evolution of religion depended on competition between species, and among the world religions -- which they identified as Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam -- Buddhism alone is a sufficiently different "species," the one world religion "entirely different from Christianity in nature, organization, doctrine and means of propagation." Therefore, they argued, "the racial contest is between yellow and white; the contest of religions is between Buddhism and Christianity,"61 After years of conflict and rivalry with Christians in Japan, Japanese Buddhists were not predisposed to take Barrows's protestations of brotherhood at face value.

Tolerance: Assimilation or Plurality?

The Theravada Buddhist delegate, Dharmapala, also expressed his suspicions of the Christian motive in inviting non-Christian delegates, admitting that he meditated for a year before deciding to attend. His opening address challenged the Parliament to match the tolerance of religious plurality, the tolerance demonstrated by the great Buddhist king Asoka "twenty-four centuries ago," recognizing and supporting the right of different religions to coexist. Experience of missionary attitudes in Asia warned delegates that this ideal of tolerance was unlikely to be what the organizers had in mind. Even liberal missionaries who showed respect for certain non-Christian religions held instead an ideal of assimilation in "fulfilment." Dharmapala offered only conditional approval: "[I]f you are serious, if you are unselfish, if you are altruistic," the Parliament would be a success, and Barrows would shine forth as the American Asoka.62

The problem was a fundamental one: acceptance of the possibility of different religions coexisting in mutual respect, rather than mere rhetorical generosity. The difference in Christian and Asian views, of assimilation versus plurality, became clear at the closing ceremony in the audience reaction to two speakers, both of whom spoke on the theme of tolerance and religious unity. The first was the Reverend George T. Candlin, an English missionary to China, who showed his own admiration and sympathy for China by dressing in Chinese clothes and, according to the Japanese delegate Shaku Soen, "speaking with such enthusiasm that foam flew from the corners of his mouth."63 Candlin was given an enthusiastic ovation. He encapsulated the liberal Christian project of considering non-Christian religions as partial revelations of the Christian truth, their followers children of a lesser light. Chicago's achievement, as he saw it, was that it had opened the way for a new period of missionary enterprise in Asia. Christianity, which was not achieving expected results in Asia, would henceforth succeed more rapidly by adopting a less confrontational approach, by overcoming the "conventional idea" that

Christianity is true and all other religions false; that Christianity is light, and other religions dark; that Christianity is of God, while other religions are of the devil, or else with a little more moderation that Christianity is by revelation from heaven while other religions are manufactures of men. You know better, and with clear light and strong assurance you can testify that there may be friendship instead of antagonism between religion and religion; that so surely as God is our common Father our hearts alike have yearned for him, and our souls in devoutest moods have caught whispers of grace dropped from his throne.64

Candlin was followed by the Indian Hindu speaker, Vivekananda, who also called for tolerance and brotherhood, but in terms of acceptance and coexistence rather than conversion. The lesson of the Parliament was, he claimed, that holiness and purity were not the exclusive possession of anyone faith. "Much has been said of the common ground of religious unity .... But if anyone here hopes that this unity would come by the triumph of anyone of these religions and the destruction of the others, to him I say, 'Brother, yours is an impossible hope: Do I wish that the Christian would become Hindu? God forbid. Do I wish that the Hindu or Buddhist would become Christian? God forbid .... The Christian is not to become a Hindu or Buddhist, nor a Hindu or Buddhist to become a Christian. But each must assimilate the others yet preserve its individuality."65

As Barrows observed, Vivekananda was one of the most popular speakers at the Parliament, "but very little approval was shown to some of his sentiments expressed in his closing address."66 It was apparently acceptable that we all have one Father, that all religions are reflections of the one light (shining on different surfaces, fractured by the prisms of different minds), provided that the implications of this were not taken so seriously as to appear to validate the differences. All were ultimately to be subsumed in the One, and the Lord was ultimately to be called Jesus. The Christians in the audience showed by their disapproval that they understood only too clearly the implication of Vivekananda's quotation of Visnu's claim that whosoever makes offerings or prayers to any God makes them to him. For Candlin the tolerance of differences was a temporary stage on the road to ultimate conversion to Christianity as the universal religion. For him the Parliament heralded "a new era of missionary enterprise and missionary hope."67 For Vivekananda, plurality was a permanent and desirable condition.

Conclusion

Although the Christian intention of the Parliament is evident enough in the official records, when Barrows wrote about the event in 1897, outside the protocol of the official publication intended for international distribution, he summed up his vision of the Parliament's purpose even more directly: "Christianity should be choked down no man's throat, but ... all men should be invited to receive it for their own good, intelligently invited to an intelligent reception."68

The organizers of the Parliament were motivated by a dream of universal Christian supremacy that was to be achieved by bringing lesser beliefs to their fulfillment. In their view Christianity was already the perfect religion, and the point of the conference was to provide an opportunity for Eastern leaders to realize this. That their Asian colleagues might just as sincerely view the Parliament as an opportunity for the West to recognize the superiority of their religion was not conceivable.

Barrows entertained his Oriental visitors in the week before the Parliament by taking them to one of his Sunday services at the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago. Barrows reported that the Buddhist delegation, after witnessing two ceremonies of entry into Christianity, a baptism and the reception of three Chinese converts, "reverently listened to a sermon on 'Christ the Wonderful.'" "It appeared," to Barrows at least, "as if the Parliament had already opened beneath the splendor of the Cross."69 The opening ceremony of the Parliament began with the singing of Psalm 100, a hymn rejoicing in having dragged the heathen into court.

Before Jehovah's awful throne,
Ye nations bow with sacred joy,
Know that the Lord is God Alone,
He can create, and He destroy.70

Although this scarcely seems an appropriate choice of anthem for an event meant to encourage religious tolerance and reassure non-Christian delegates of open-minded reception, the reception and hospitality the Asian delegates received were more tolerant than they had expected.71 They had considerable experience with Christian attitudes, were forewarned of the possibility of Christian aggression, and came prepared to deal with it. Nevertheless, the attempt to make Japanese Buddhism acceptable and relevant in this North American Protestant Christian arena imposed certain determinants on its representation and consequently on Western knowledge of Japanese Buddhism.

THE RULES OF THE PARLIAMENT

Securing the Truth

The invitation to participate in the World's Parliament of Religions was accompanied by a ten-point list of the objects of the event and a set of "specific rules and regulations ... promulgated for the conduct of the proposed conference."1 The rules specified that delegates would "state their own beliefs and reasons for them with the greatest frankness" and would refrain from criticism of others. The Parliament was to be "a grand international assembly for mutual conference, fellowship, and information, and not for controversy, for worship, for the counting of votes or for the passing of resolutions."2 These specific rules for the conduct of the Congress of Religions were supplemented by the rules governing the Auxiliary Congresses in general, which Charles C. Bonney proudly described as the "the actual working machinery," the controls under which, the author boasted, "even congresses on labour and religion were conducted with such order, decorum, peace, and success, as were never surpassed and probably never equalled."3 Under the general headings of "Themes, Speakers and Limitations" and "Discussion of the Subjects Presented," these rules controlled what might be spoken of, who might speak, the conditions under which speech might be heard. "By far, the most important of all these rules and regulations," Bonney declared, "was that which excluded controversy and prohibited strife."4

The documents exude the rhetoric of tolerance and universal brotherhood and were frequently quoted by contemporary commentators, the Japanese delegates included, to exemplify the spirit of the event.5 The World's Parliament of Religions was "to bring together in frank and friendly conference, the most eminent men of different faiths, strong in their personal convictions, who should strive to see and show what are the supreme truths, and what light religion has to throw upon the important problems of the age -- the labour problem, education, social problems."6 The Parliament was "a royal feast to which the representatives of every faith were asked to bring the richest fruits and the fairest flowers of their religion."7 "Each representative was asked to present the very best things he could offer for those in whose behalf he spoke, and was admonished that nothing was desired of him in the way of attack on any other person, system or creed."8 The integrity of the proceedings as a serious search for the light of the world was further protected by being "rigidly purged of cranks," and there was "neither time nor fitness for minor sects."9

Although they appear to guarantee a generous and all encompassing tolerance, the objects of the Parliament, which emerged from and reinforced American and Christian dominance, and the rules of conduct of the Parliament that safeguarded them, conditioned the way non-Christian religions were represented. They controlled the discourse, effectively reducing all other religions to inadequate attempts to express the Christian revelation. They determined what was said of Buddhism and what authority was accorded the speech of its representatives.

This is, however, but one side of the Parliament's organization. No less important was the function of these rules in validating the knowledge that emerged. If only genuine authorities were allowed to speak, and they were allowed to speak freely, the event would produce the truth of all religions. This was then to be preserved in the official record, a "permanent record to be published to the world, an accurate and authoritative account of the present condition and outlook of religion among the leading nations of the earth."10 Writing after the event, Bonney was explicit in confirming the authority of Barrows's version: "[T]he Parliament must be judged by its official record, edited by its Chairman, the Rev. Dr. John Henry Barrows, and not by any nor all of the very numerous fragmentary and distorted reports of it, which have misled portions of the public at home and abroad."11

The book, extensively edited and embellished with photographs -- not artists' impressions but captured instances of "reality" -- was the true record of the Parliament. In a certain sense, the point of the Parliament was to produce the text:

"[T] he chief object is to procure the maturest thought of the world on all the great questions of the age, in a form best adapted to universal publication."12 It was the organizers' stated plan that it would become a source of reference and debate, a record for the next century to judge -- and, indeed, though other records are available, it remains the authoritative source.13 This chapter first considers the way in which the rules of the Parliament conditioned the presentation of Buddhism and the Japanese delegates' participation. It then looks at the way our memory of the event was further shaped by Barrows's record of it.

Absence of Debate

The rule of conduct most praised by the Parliament's chroniclers was that "no provision was made for any free debating society in the whole range of the Congresses."14 Johnson confidently identified this as the fundamental condition of the success of the event.

Strict regulations were made and enforced for the exclusion of the volunteer address, and of every form of random talk. The entire time at disposal was allotted to those who were supposed to be the most competent to instruct and advise. Controversy was prohibited and the passing of resolutions of approval and censure was forbidden. The writers and speakers were asked not to attack the views of others but to set forth with as much cogency as possible the merits of their own. The theory of the Congresses was that those who spoke in them were addressing the intellectual and moral world through the medium of the Congresses, and that the views expressed would be afterward widely discussed in pulpit, forum, public press, and private conversation ... participating countries were earnestly requested ... to recommend for the Congress speakers and writers of the highest qualifications and abilities.15

The overriding concerns of the organizers in calling the Congress of Religions a parliament appears to have been first, to convey the principle of the equal right to be heard and, second, that each of the speakers was a legitimate representative of his constituency. The event diverged from the parliamentary ideal most significantly on precisely the point regularly identified as its greatest achievement, the absence of debate. It was this, said one critic, that reduced it from a true parliament to a mere "World's Fair of Theological exhibits with a sort of Midway Plaisance attachment for the bric a brac of creeds."16

For most commentators, the lack of controversy at the Parliament was considered one of its greatest achievements. "Random talk" -- unexpected and uncontrolled outbursts and address on unwanted issues -- arose only on one or two occasions, such as when a speaker on Islam inspired "a sudden and unpremeditated outburst of feeling" by "what was taken for an attack on the fundamental principle of social morality."17 Control of what could be spoken of began from the time that Barrows, as chairman and organizer of the program, read and approved papers. He disapproved of Hirai's first paper, but Hirai persisted, demanding the right to speak. Debate was prohibited under the banner of tolerance and fair hearing, allowing no room for the "malignant enemy of human progress ... that vindictive spirit which finds delight in assailing others instead of presenting something meritorious of its own."18 There was, however, another side to the prohibition. In the control of "volunteer address and random talk" the only questions or comments allowed during the sessions were under the control of the presiding officer, who could call upon the "most eminent persons present,"19 invariably leading Christian theologians. The right of rebuttal of parliamentary debate was denied. Votes of approval or censure were also specifically forbidden, but significantly only during the proceedings, and because, as Bonney explained, the subjects treated were too important to be "submitted to the vote of those who happen to be present." This is what made the published record of the proceedings so important. It was to offer the papers "for subsequent deliberate examination by the enlightened minds of all countries; for unrestricted discussion in the forum, the pulpit, and the public press; and finally for that exalted public opinion which expresses the consensus of such minds."20 The organizers intended that the discussion would take place in forums effectively closed to the foreign delegates. The non-Christian delegates would have no right of reply, no possibility of engaging in the discourse, or of intervening in the formation of its objects.21 This may have been less a deliberate ploy to control discourse on non-Christian religions than a consequence of the extrapolation of Bonney's original vision of an essentially North American ecumenical harmony. It was nevertheless effective in excluding Buddhists from the discussion of Buddhism, from the public forum where they might answer criticisms or questions and clarify meanings.

As a consequence, the Parliament provided Christian sermon writers with a whole set of "straw men" authenticated and validated by the status of the delegates as chosen representatives of their faith and the assurance that they presented the "finest fruits" of their belief. Barrows's writings and sermons after the Parliament show that he at least used the Parliament in this way. Having hosted the delegates and attended the Parliament, he prefaced his still uninformed attacks on Buddhism by claiming he knew Oriental religions "both ideal and practical."22 Under the banner of tolerance, free speech, and fair play, discourse was controlled and held tightly within the confines of Christian domination. There were no criticisms or questions in the one public forum where they might have been answered, where meanings might have been clarified. Buddhists had no control at all over how the information created under these restrictive conditions was then diffused.

Authorizing Speech

One of the most consistently repeated of the regulations was the assurance that all representatives were to be "persons of strong and vigorous convictions who would be acknowledged by their organizations as worthy to speak on their behalf."23 The truth was guaranteed by controlling the speaker, and the constant reiteration of this rule and its enforcement were fundamental to the authority of the record. Nevertheless, we find that the Buddhist delegates were not the only "authorities" to speak on Buddhism. The number of Christians speaking on Buddhism at least equaled the number of authorized Buddhists. Apart from the Christian missionaries who directly attacked Buddhism in apparent disregard for the rules of the Parliament, a number of Christian theologians spoke of Buddhism within papers on the main themes. The imbalance is even greater if we consider that Buddhism was implicated in the discussion of nihilism, atheism, and materialist philosophy (see Chapter 4).

If we leave aside for the moment the problem of considering Buddhism as a single entity, Buddhism first entered into the proceedings in a paper by Professor Milton Valentine, D.D., president of a theological college and scholar of comparative religion. Valentine argued the universality of the notion of God, an argument that required he explain the apparent anomaly of Buddhist "atheism." Other non-Buddhists who contributed to the discussion included Professor M. S. Terry. The argument of his paper, "Sacred Books of the World as Literature," was that for those brought up under Christianity, there was little that was attractive in the writings of Buddhism, which, as he described it, was negative, life-denying, and pessimistic.24 Mrs. Eliza Sunderland, Ph.D., speaking on hierology, confirmed for the audience that Buddhism was a "stiflingly ascetic ethical system." Buddhism, she declared, "neglects the divine, preaches the final salvation of man from the miseries of existence through the power of his own self-renunciation, and as it was atheistic in origin, it soon became infected by the fantastic of mythology and the most childish of superstitions."25 Isaac T. Headland presented an illustrated firsthand account of idolatry and superstition in Chinese Buddhism and the degradation of its priesthood under the title "Religion in Peking." Each of these speakers was apparently "qualified" to speak, in spite of their obvious antagonism to Buddhism and lack of endorsement by any Buddhist community, by their training in Christian theology or the Western science of comparative religion.

Among the Christian missionaries speaking on Buddhism was the Reverend Dr. S. G. McFarland, veteran missionary from Bangkok. While not overly critical -- Buddhism's moral code compared favorably with the Christian Decalogue -- he nevertheless confirmed the atheistic, pessimistic, and selfish image of the Theravada.26 The Reverend M. L. Gordon, missionary at Doshisha in Japan, with less sympathy, spoke on "Why Buddhism Is Not a Universal Religion."27 The authority of these missionaries apparently depended on their firsthand contact with Asian religions, but on no account could they be considered accepted representatives of the Asian communities, and surely the condition of strong and vigorous commitment demanded of speakers by the rules of the Parliament implied commitment to the religion they spoke on. The prevailing attitude of the missionary contingent was indicated by the refusal of pioneer Chinese scholar Dr. Legge, himself a missionary, to attend a mission conference "where he would be compelled to listen to a continual violation of the Ninth Commandment [Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor] against those who would have no opportunity of defending themselves."28 Legge, at least, recognized the importance of the right to rebuttal, denied at the Parliament in service of harmony.

The Parliament papers were given in three main divisions. Apart from the central forum, supposedly devoted to the great questions of religion, there was the parallel Scientific Section, which was given over to papers described as of "a more scientific and less popular character," and the Denominational Congresses, which encompassed such diverse discussions as the Congress on Missions and Sunday rest. In the Scientific Section of the Parliament, in contrast to the control of the main sessions, "papers were often followed by free conversation"29 and the rules of qualification and commitment were so frequently flouted that they may not have applied at all. It was here that Christians spoke on Buddhism, Hinduism, Shinto, and every other religion controlled only by the "scientific" rules of comparative religion, a field of study itself imbued with Christian preoccupations. Whatever the distinctions made between papers presented in this category in the application of the "rigidly enforced" controls on authority, they were published along with those of the main presentations with nothing more than a subheading to indicate any change of perspective or authority.

The end result of these exceptions to the rigid enforcement of the rule of authority is that Gordon, missionary to Japan, was given equal status with Buddhist abbots. Barrows himself, summing up the Buddhist conception of God, referred with equal deference to the papers of Professor Valentine and of Shaku Soen, the Buddhist "bishop," and of Dharmapala, the Theravada representative. He ignored the contributions of the other qualified Buddhist authorities -- all of whom addressed the issue of theism. Most significant, this essentializing stance overlooked any distinctions Japanese made between the teachings of their religion and the Buddhisms of other parts of Asia they were at pains to distance themselves from.

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Part 3 of 3

Extending Authority: The Solicited Prize Essay

Barrows had solicited papers attacking the religions of East Asia. He wrote to a missionary in Japan requesting a paper on Taoism, the "Demon in the Triad of Chinese Religion: Dragon, Image and Demon" (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism), offering "an opportunity to present the dark features of a heathen system."30 The paper on Confucianism presented to the Parliament by the eminently qualified Chinese diplomat and Confucian scholar Pung Kwang31 was put against an essay by a Chinese Christian convert solicited in competition for which Barrows offered a prize of "a premium of gold."32

Introducing the paper, Barrows highlighted the fact that it was a "prize essay" -- a paper proved by competition to be the best information on the subject -- and an up-to-date opinion, because it was written especially for the Parliament and had been translated just a few months earlier (May 1893). As English is presumably the native language of the translator, the Reverend Timothy Richard of the English Baptist Mission, China, one can only assume that the decidedly quaint English in which the essay was written -- "this doctrine is all important, like as the hinge of a door" -- was meant to signal its authentic Chinese origin; that the translator made himself as transparent as possible, taking care not to impose the rules of English grammar on the work. Barrows, as editor, apparently followed his example. The essay did not criticize Confucianism as such, only its contemporary manifestation. It reinforced the message projected by Christians since the time of Matteo Ricci, that Confucianism is a system of civil organization with a monotheistic world view that is not antagonistic to Christianity. It was, however, critical of Taoism and Buddhism, to which were attributed the apparent flaws in observable practice. A third paper on Confucianism by Dr. Ernst Faber, "Genesis and Development of Confucianism,"33 confirmed this general attitude. Faber presented Confucius as a fundamentalist reformer urging modern Chinese to throw out such evil accretions as foot binding, to return to his original teaching, and to learn from the West. Putting aside the sympathy shown here with Barrows's own mission, the point I want to make is not how Confucianism was represented but the discrepancy between the professed rules governing who may speak and the actual freedom of platform and overt encouragement given to critics of non-Christian religions. We should also note how the implication of Japanese Buddhism in essentialized notions of "Asia" and "Asian religions" contributed to what was said of it at the Parliament.

The Rule of Time

The possibility of presenting a coherent account of non-Christian religions was also restricted by the organization of the event. Like all well-run conferences, the World's Parliament of Religions placed firm restrictions on the length of time available to each speaker, assuring equal opportunity and encouraging its speakers to be concise and to the point: "[L]engthy papers are neither necessary or desirable."34 This may indeed be the case for the Parliament as Bonney originally envisaged it, a forum for establishing Judeo-Christian ecumenism in which mainly Christian speakers would argue points of contention within a generally agreed body of doctrine, rehearse familiar controversies, and at most publicize ongoing institutional issues. Twenty minutes, the allocation, is ample time to express platitudes of fraternity and shared visions of the future. It may even be an appropriate period in which to present an explanation of a point of doctrinal difference between denominations within the shared ground of belief in the Holy Trinity. However, it totally removed the possibility of Buddhists establishing the parameters of their discussion.

The Buddhist explanation of their alternate view of the world could not be dealt with in a twenty-minute paper, especially because it was delivered in a foreign language, one that restricted the vocabulary for translation of Buddhist technical terms to either Christian terms or the terms of materialist philosophy, to an unprepared and largely uninterested audience. Curiosity is not the same as actually wanting to work at understanding what other people believe. A short paper, regardless of its desirability in other circumstances, could not allow the presentation of a total and totally unfamiliar belief system in any meaningful way. Presented under these circumstances, non-Christian religions must necessarily have seemed shallow, incomplete, and no doubt incoherent. The rule of time served to preserve and perpetuate the mystery and apparent irrelevance that surrounded them. Because there was an existing body of Western scholarship on Buddhism, the short papers prevented a real assault on the aspects of Western knowledge the Buddhists delegates perceived as error. Here, again, the organizing rules of the Parliament acted to reinforce the existing construct.

The Finest Fruits

What could be said, and was understood, about non-Christian religions was also conditioned by the apparently benevolent attitude that "the so-called heathen religions must not be judged solely by their idolatries and cruel rites any more than apple trees should be judged by their worst fruits."35 The rule branded non-Christian religions as cruel and idolatrous in its very enunciation, reminding the audience that however reasonable the representation at the Parliament may seem, it is only one side of the picture. The other, darker side remained unspoken but was not to be forgotten.

Preserving the coexistence of good and evil in Buddhism was fundamental to the mission campaign of its eradication. The Reverend Spence Hardy, for example, one of the first missionaries to write on Buddhism, explained that to overcome Buddhism, Christians had to admit that there was undoubtedly much that was good in it. This was because it could not be denied, if the teachings alone were considered, that it had much in common with Christianity. The point of difference to be stressed, he argued, was that Buddhism is atheistic and nihilistic, and these faults outweigh all else.36

Discrepancy between the ideal teachings of a religion and its actual practice was also exploited. This again was a familiar argument against Buddhism. Because Western scholars had created the Buddha Sakyamuni as a historical, humanist philosopher, the lack of fit between the "Pure Buddhism" of their construct and Asian practices was explained by the inadequacy of such an austere philosophy to meet the needs of the people or, alternately, in racist terms, the inadequacy of the people to live up to the precepts. Barrows, qualifying the representation of Buddhism by the Japanese delegates, concluded that "the oriental speakers were, on the whole, fairly representative of the higher ideas of their own faith, if not of the popular religions."37 His message was a clear reminder to his readers that what they had heard on Japanese Buddhism was partial. While it is certainly true that the Japanese presentation of Buddhism did not deal with popular Japanese practice, the same could certainly be said of the papers on Christianity.

The rule demanding that only the "finest fruits" of each religion be displayed opened the opportunity for the play of comparison between ideal and actuality. This was a familiar missionary practice in which biblical ideals were taken as the measure of existing Asian practice, usually as it could be observed among the poor and socially deprived.38 The paper on Buddhism in Japan by Gordon exemplified the practice.39 His "irrefragable" evidence of the immorality of Japanese priests came from rumors circulating in Christian missionary circles, from statistics of admissions to the mission clinics for treatment of "immoral diseases," and from the rhetoric of Meiji Buddhist reform, which followed the usual practice of enlisting public support for change by emphasizing present decay. One must ask not only why Gordon, as a Christian, was allowed to speak on Buddhism but what place his information had under the rules of the Parliament? Why, also, did it deserve inclusion in the Parliament proper rather than the smaller, less public Scientific Section? And, because Barrows tells us that he found it necessary to be quite severe in his selection and editing of the material to preserve in the two-volume record, why was this paper preserved against all the rules for securing the truth?

Like so many of the rules of the Parliament, this much repeated insistence on presenting only the best of each religion was at best selectively applied. Gordon's paper was devoted to what he believed was wrong with Buddhism, arguing in essence that its principal defect was that it was not Christianity. It has no concept of soul, an inadequate concept of deity, no sense of a personal sin against God, and an unsatisfactory doctrine of salvation. As well as this, he claimed, it is pessimistic, holds women in contempt, lacks homogeneity and unity, and is not exclusive or, as he put it, fails "to command the exclusive reverence of the human heart."40 One would not expect this last observation to be ground for criticism amid the professions of brotherhood of the Parliament. With similar disregard for the much-lauded rules of the Parliament, missionaries discussing Hinduism did not hesitate to refer to sati, infanticide, child marriage, and devadasi.41 These were familiar targets of criticism and, as such, were consequently also discussed by the Indian representatives of the Brahmo Samaj, because reform of these practices was essential to the foundation of their society,42 and Jain delegate Virchand Gandhi, who felt they reflected on Indian society as a whole. The point is that the reiteration of the existence of these practices, even in the statement of their reform, consolidated their association with Hinduism.

We have already discussed the implications of the rule insisting on the presentation of all that was good in each religion. Johnson's record, rephrasing it in the familiar terms of fundamentalist reform, of separating the essence of the religion from "any pernicious practices that had grown up through the centuries and claimed protection under its name,"43 opens the possibility of a further interpretation. Asian religions were to be rationalized in the post-Enlightenment sense of the word by order of the organizing committee. Johnson avoided Barrows's hint of skeletons in the closet but nevertheless inappropriately imposed Christian and post-Enlightenment criteria of acceptability on what may be said about non-Christian religions. He enshrined the constructs of Western Orientalist scholarship, which were formed by this rationalization of severing "pernicious practices," "accretions of time," from Oriental religions to reveal the "true" doctrine. In Buddhist scholarship this meant stripping away all practice, ritual, mythology -- and the whole of the Mahayana -- to reveal the supposed essence of Sakyamuni's teaching, preserved in the oldest texts. Most important for the Japanese delegates, under this rule Japanese Buddhism, which did not exist in any form until more than a thousand years after the birth of the Buddha, could be dismissed as not really being Buddhism at all. This was, however, a familiar challenge to the Japanese delegates, and one that they set out prepared to meet.

Language and Authenticity

The rules of the Parliament specified that the proceedings were to be conducted in the English language. Apart from the difficulty the delegates faced in translating Buddhist concepts into English, there was also the problem of actual spoken delivery, of being audible, intelligible, and convincing while speaking to an audience of several thousand people in an unamplified hall. Dharmapala and Vivekanada, both of whom lived under British domination in South Asia and therefore were familiar with both the English language and Western modes of public address, managed most effectively. This no doubt had a great deal to do with their popularity and their prominence in the press. Malalgoda comments on the importance of effective public speaking in Buddhist revival in Ceylon in the second half of the nineteenth century.44 Buddhists, compelled to engage in debate with Christian missionaries, gave up the time-honored Buddhist mode of quiet, spoken, seated address in favor of the Protestant standing harangue with great success. The Japanese priests had not made this transition. Among the Japanese Buddhists Hirai and Noguchi alone had sufficient command of the language to speak before the audience.45

These problems aside, the more important aspect of the rule was that although the organizers deliberately sought out delegates with a knowledge of English,46 the ability of the delegates to speak English was used to undermine their credibility as authentic representatives of non-Christian religions. The very fact of being learned and understanding English, Barrows argued, proved that they had come into contact with Western philosophy and Christian thought; consequently, whatever appeared to be positive aspects of their religion he dismissed as reflections of the power of these influences. His travels in India, China, and Japan subsequent to the Parliament apparently confirmed him in this belief because in 1899 he again declared that "Christianity has become so pervasive that it is difficult to find scholarly men who have not been touched by its brightness."47

The Published Record

The Parliament generated a profusion of literature,48 but as the quotation from Charles Bonney at the head of this chapter states, only Barrows's edition was to be considered authoritative. It alone preserved the "truth" as generated by the event. Of the other publications available, the nearest challenger was Neely's History of the Parliament of Religions, the only other work that offered a "complete" record of the papers presented. Neely's edition was compiled from original manuscripts supplemented by notes of the proceedings taken by "an expert stenographer who attended every session,"49 whose certification of accuracy, completeness, and authenticity appears immediately behind the title page. Comparison of the two works reveals considerable discrepancies between them.

In general, the papers in Barrows's official edition tend to be shorter and more heavily edited, especially in the second volume where many of the papers on Buddhism appear. Hirai's paper, "Synthetic Religion," for example, is about four hundred words long in Barrows but closer to two thousand in Neely's History. Shaku Soen's controversial "Arbitration Instead of War" in Barrows has been reduced to about half the length of the paper published by Neely. A minor casualty of the desire to preserve the seriousness and harmony of the event was Shaku Soen's opening quip on the sixteenth day, a Congress on Buddhism, expressing the joy in having no one but "we heathen" on the platform.50 Some papers, such as "Man from a Catholic Point of View,"51 were omitted entirely, but then Barrows openly admitted that some interesting papers had to be "retrenched" for lack of space.52 Barrows's editorial policy was not to record the total proceedings as Neely's History claimed to do. He had a higher purpose. He explained in a notice to readers in the front of the first volume that although it is rich with valuable materials, "it would be even more valuable if parts of it had been rigorously condensed."53 The second volume therefore was to be carefully pruned "to furnish a book of 800 pages, in which the gold will be even more abundant than in the first volume." The selection and reduction of papers rested on what Barrows considered to be "gold," and this was clearly his vision of the triumph of future Christian universality to which he devoted his remaining years,54 and he seems to have had few qualms about editing contributions accordingly.

As in the Parliament itself, the truth of the papers rested on the authority of the delegates speaking under Parliamentary protection, but here the image of harmony was even more controlled. Barrows modified the language of the papers, softening views that may have been considered critical. He eliminated contentious language and ideas such as Hirai's provocative call for religious unity: "Stop your debate about the difference of religion. Kill Gautama .... Do not mind Christ. ... Tear up the Bible."55 Although the sentiment may have conformed to the Parliamentary ideal of the nonsectarian pursuit of the truth, Hirai's expression jarred the harmony of the record and, no doubt, would have assailed Christian sensitivities. Violent rhetoric conformed to the image of neither men of religion nor gentlemen of the Orient. The publication of such a statement would also have made it rather difficult for Barrows to present Hirai, as he did, as a candidate for conversion. The purging of discord was again used as a device of control.

Ashitsu Jitsuzen's paper was edited to less than half its length in Barrows's edition.56 The first three pages of the six that appear in Neely's History were heavily condensed. The paper was cut short, avoiding Ashitsu's criticism of Western scholarship and his suggestion that there might be more to Buddhism than the West had yet realized. The paper, as it appeared in Neely's History, continued, observing that although many Europeans and Americans had studied Buddhism, they had never heard of Mahayana and, consequently, "they too hastily concluded that the true doctrine of Buddhism is Hinayana, and that so-called Mahayana is nothing but a portion of Indian pure philosophy. They are wrong. They have entirely misunderstood. They have only poorly gained with their scanty knowledge a smattering of Buddhism. They are entirely ignorant of the boundless sea of Buddha's doctrine rolling just beyond their feet."57

Other cuts in this paper include Buddhist technical terms in Japanese, Sanskrit, and Chinese, and their explanation. These may not have meant much to the general reader Barrows had in mind, but their absence in the record may go some way toward explaining why scholars using this source dismiss the paper as a vague gesture toward the aims expressed in the Japanese.58 With the aid of a dictionary of Buddhist terms to decipher it, the paper appears as a desperate attempt to convey a great deal of doctrine. It was, if nothing more, an indication that there was a great deal of Japanese Mahayana Buddhism that the West knew nothing of -- the "boundless sea" he had referred to -- a verbal gesture equivalent to the gift of the four hundred volumes of sutras in Chinese the delegation placed before the Parliament on the opening day. Compare, for example, the two discussions of the Three Bodies of the Buddha (Japanese: sanshin; Sanskrit: trayah kayah). In Barrows we get merely: "Buddha has three personalities. The first is entirely colorless and formless, but at the same time, it has the nature of eternality, omnipresence, and unchangeableness." In Neely's History the equivalent passage reads: "The Buddha has three personalities, namely Hosshin, Hoshin and Wojin. Now in Hosshin, Ho means law, and Shin means personality, so it is a name given to the personality of the constitution after the Buddha got the highest Buddhahood. This personality is entirely colorless and formless, but at the same time, it has the nature of eternality, omnipresence and unchangeableness. Hosshin is called Birushana in Sanskrit, and Honissai-sho in Chinese, both meaning omnipresence."

Granted the version in Neely's History was probably no more comprehensible to the audience at the Parliament, but by giving the Buddhist terms it indicated that there was indeed a Japanese doctrine dealing with the nature of the Buddha -- that the concept of "Buddha" was far more subtle and complicated than the Western assumption of a human historical figure. Because the target audience for the Japanese delegation was Western scholars, a group that included people with knowledge of these languages, correlating the Japanese with the Sanskrit and Chinese opened the way for comparative study, and perhaps even a share of the admiration granted Sanskrit philosophical works. The effort to communicate is apparent even if the gesture was ineffective.

The significance of radical editing of the papers is also apparent in the debate over Shaku Soen's paper "Arbitration Instead of War."59 It is clear from the introductory passages available in Neely's History that the title is a reference to the opening address and proposes that the various religions of the world follow the example of international law, recognizing existing differences, protecting the weak against aggression. This was a core theme of the Japanese project in support of treaty revision at Chicago. In his closing remarks to the Parliament Hirai returned to the issue, congratulating the hosts as "the pioneers of human history. You have achieved an assembly of the world's religions, and we believe your next step will be toward the ideal goal of this Parliament, the realization of international justice."60 As it appears in Barrows's edition, Shaku Soen's paper is reduced to a rather woolly statement of brotherhood and peace. The longer version proposed that just as nations of the world settle their differences through international law -- a law they all agree to, although it is not the national law of any of them -- there should be an agreed common belief that all could uphold though none need claim as their own. The theme for the day on which he presented the paper, the sixteenth day of the Parliament, was the attitude of Christianity toward other religions. With typical Japanese concern for the appropriateness of the occasion, Shaku Soen put in a gentle plea that the attitude displayed at the World's Parliament of Religions be generally applied; that differences be put aside under the general law of truth.61 It was a call for coexistence in religious plurality rather than conversion.

The Parliament Illustrated

The visual spectacle of the World's Parliament of Religions was reproduced in the official publication. Portraits throughout conveyed the essential message of the global representation of religious opinion, and Protestant Christian universality was asserted by the prominent display of portraits in exotic costume of Christians from all corners of the world,62 including portraits of Christian converts from India and Japan. A distinctively turbaned Honorable Maya Das, who, although not a delegate, was "a leading native Christian," appears on page 30, and on page 37 we find "that earnest Christian, Hon. Harman Singh, uncle of His Royal Highness Jatjat Jit Singh, the Maharajah of Karputhala." The rank of these men countered the accusation that Christianity was only successful among the lower classes of Indian society, a matter discussed at length in the Congress on Missions.

Christian converts were depicted well dressed, clean, alert, straight-backed, in two-thirds profile, as were the Christian delegates. These formal portraits were in distinct contrast to photographs of subjects such as the Brahman Pundits, depicted sitting on the floor in round-shouldered slouch.63 The clearest example of what appears to be a mirror of the lessons in Social Darwinism of the Midway Plaisance was the photograph of "A Mendicant Dervish" (p. 712), slouched, slackjawed, shifty-eyed, and barefoot, a stereotypical "Oriental" in what appears to be a staged studio portrait taken against a painted backdrop and foregrounded with exotic flowering plants. Christianity, the photographs of the converts claimed, was a force for civilization.

Portraits of the Asian delegates in the publication, as in the Parliament itself, provided the exotic, the picturesque, "arrayed in costly silk vestments of all colors of the rainbow."64 The dignity of the delegates reflected on the event itself; of course, these were men who, as Barrows pointed out, had been touched by the civilizing influences of Western education and Christianity. However, the contrast between the portraits of these men and the photographs of native priests, native pilgrims, and scenes of native practice paralleled the contrast already stressed by Barrows and the rules of the Parliament between the "finest fruits" and the reality of Asian practice. The two illustrations accompanying Toki Horyu's article make this point. The first is a portrait of Toki himself, captioned with a quotation "time to remodel Japanese Buddhism" (p. 545); the second is a curious photograph of an itinerant priest accompanied by a young child assistant ("A Buddhist Priest Carrying a Portable Idol Shrine," p. 553). The juxtaposition of the illustrations proclaimed Barrows's caution of the darker side of non-Christian religions, the discrepancy between ideal and reality and, in this case, a reminder of the persistence of idolatry in Japan.

Japan nevertheless fared comparatively well in Barrows's selection of images. Japanese Buddhism was also represented by several ornate buildings and a studio portrait of a "pilgrim" standing before a portrait of Mount Fuji (p. 629). By far the greater number of photographs depicted Shinto subjects, reflecting the assumption that Shinto, the indigenous religion of Japan, was more typically representative of Japanese religion than the "foreign" imported Buddhism. The Shinto priest, a venerable bearded figure ornately clothed in voluminous white robes, conveyed the very image of Oriental respectability. This general message of "nonbarbaric heathenism" was expanded by the Shinto couple, the Shinto gateway, and the Shinto shrines, all of them exotic but inoffensive.

The privileging of Shinto evident in the illustrations reflected the marginalization of Japanese Buddhism by Western academics. For Barrows the Buddhism of Japan remained firmly within the general category of later aberrations of the original teachings of the Buddha, even after he had actually visited the country.65 The Buddhism of Japan was but one of the present manifestations in various Asian countries, which were but aberrant forms of "real" Buddhism, lumped together into some sort of monolithic entity as a consequence of this common origin. Whatever was said of Buddhism in whatever form, therefore, contributed to the image of Japanese Buddhism, and illustrations such as those of "idols" in temples in Rangoon and Bangkok reinforced the notion of Buddhist idolatry in which the Buddhism of Japan shared.

Japan's place in the general Western category of "Asian" or "Oriental" also meant that depictions of other Asian religions, especially Hinduism, reflected on Japanese Buddhism. It was, after all, only a few decades before this that Emerson had referred to the Upanishads as Buddhist. The distinction was not widely recognized. Barrows reported that during the Parliament "even the omniscient newspapers were all the while confusing the faiths of the world,"66 Hinduism was represented by its architecture, its icons, and its people. One cannot accuse Barrows of misrepresentation, because all of the photographs are authentic, but the accumulated effect of scenes such as "Hindus at Their Devotions before Partaking of Food," which shows men, typically dressed with bare chest, seated on the ground about to eat (p. 315); of "Burning Ghat at Calcutta," showing a corpse exposed on the ground (p. 173); of sunnyasis with matted hair covered in ashes (p. 329); of "Shiva's Bull Carved out of Solid Stone" (p. 111) -- which incidentally included two men, again "half-naked" in Indian fashion in postures of worship -- was nevertheless to reinforce the "uncivilized," "heathen," and "idolatrous" images of India. Barrows's readers were no doubt as unimpressed by the display of skin in Asian dress as were their contemporary Western visitors to the East. The nineteenth-century West was affronted by uncovered bodies.67 Uncovered bodies were primitive. Other aspects of the scenes -- eating on the ground, public bathing, mass ritual, death unconcealed -- would also fail to conform to audience proprieties. Other illustrations included multilimbed deities such as the sculpture of Siva slaying the Elephant Demon (simply captioned as "Interior of Hindu Temple," p. 321). Such images were still unacceptable to the Western aesthetic well into the twentieth century. Even for V. A. Smith, whose pioneering work Fine Art in India and Ceylon (1911) was the first to grant that India actually produced "Fine Art," they were "grotesque and absurd," "Additional limbs are put on as prescribed, whether or not they destroy the balance of the composition or excite a feeling of disgust at monstrous growths that call out loudly for amputation,"68

The overall effect of the illustrations of India was to reinforce the missionary image of the idolatrous, heathen Oriental, and the contrast between this and the depiction of Japan in this publication accurately reflected Barrows's later statement of his feelings toward the two countries. India was for him "a great banyan tree, spreading out dark, wide, and gloomy, with many of its trunks decayed, a resting place of unclean birds, and sombre with clouds that cover both the zenith and the horizon." Japan, by contrast, was "a wild-cherry blossom, gleaming in the morning light of Western civilization." While his India represented the decaying past, "Japan represents the present and the future, and her brave, intelligent people abound with national hope and self-confidence."69 The problem for the Japanese Buddhist delegation, however, was that for Barrows the Japanese religion that accompanied this positive image was not Buddhism but Confucianism, Shinto, or even Christianity. The relationship of Western attitudes to the two Indian religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, is dealt with in the following chapter, but the attitudes evident in the illustrations to the official record of the Parliament justify the Japanese project of distancing Japanese Buddhism from the Buddhism of the South.

The publication of the official record also gave Barrows the right of commentary. Although the work was ostensibly a record of the proceedings, that is, the papers of the delegates, large sections of both volumes were given over to Barrows's interpretation of the proceedings, his summaries of the most important issues, and comments from a variety of sources selected by him. In these sections he distilled the knowledge produced on such themes as "what the various faiths had to say concerning God" and "what the various religions reported in regard to the nature of man." In his summary of what Buddhism has to say concerning God Barrows referred only to Valentine, Shaku Soen, and Dharmapala, and as mentioned earlier, against all the rules of the Parliament he gave non-Christian authority equal weight with the authority of these selected Buddhists, ignoring other genuine Buddhist authorities such as Toki Horyii, Ashitsu Jitsuzen, and Yatsubuchi Bunryii. In his desire to capture the essence of Buddhism he ignored differences and merged the Theravada and Mahayana. Barrows had the final say in defining what was said of Buddhism at the Parliament.

The Priority of the Text

The Japanese were very aware of the importance of the published record of the conference to Western understanding of their religion. Supporters of the delegation argued the need for the All Sects Buddhist Union to send an official Buddhist delegation to Chicago for this reason. They argued that the official body needed to take control of what was said at the Parliament because this would be recorded and would be regarded as the truth of Japanese Buddhism. Representation should not be left to an independent, because "what he says and what he does will be recorded as the principles of Buddhism, will be published in magazines and spread all over the world."70 It is therefore most important, they argued, that what is said by the delegates agrees with what the union wished published. Once in print it would be impossible to change. The delegates and their supporters not only prepared their papers with this in mind but prepared a number of books on Japanese Buddhism for distribution.71 These were especially written for the occasion and were then circulated among the Buddhist community, published in journals for discussion before being translated and printed for distribution. The decision to publish books was presumably to overcome the limitations of the short papers given on topics directed by the Christian organizers of the Parliament. Delegates also avoided the constraints of the official edition by publishing versions of their papers in Paul Carus's journals.72 Each paper in Barrows carried his 1893 claim to copyright.

Max Muller wrote congratulating the organizers on the success of the World's Parliament of Religions, admitting that it had succeeded beyond his expectations.73 Muller had not attended but had contributed a paper, though not, as one might expect, on Asian religions. Muller was generous in his praise of the American achievement, but in his view the real parliament of religions had occurred some time before with the publication of the "forty silent volumes" of his Sacred Books of the East series. As Muller saw it, the Parliament was a success because the world had been prepared for it through this work.74 These volumes, he declared, were more authoritative than the Chicago Parliament because they contained the truth of the ancient texts rather than the well-intentioned but frequently erroneous accounts of Asian religions in their modern distortions. Muller criticized certain speakers -- singling out Buddhists for his example -- for putting forward statements that could not be substantiated by "chapter and verse from their own canonical books."75 "It was the absence of this authority, the impossibility of checking the enthusiastic descriptions of the supreme excellence of every single religion, that seems to me to have somewhat interfered with the usefulness of that great ecumenical meeting at Chicago."76 The rules of truth of the time gave ultimate authority to the written text. Muller's project -- capturing the real and original essence of Eastern religions -- was not that of the Parliament, which claimed to describe instead their present state, to encapsulate the living truths of the world's religions by having them delivered firsthand by the highest authorities. The authority of the World's Parliament of Religions nevertheless resided in its textual record.

Conclusion

There was a significant discrepancy between the statement of the rules governing the conduct of the World's Parliament of Religions and their implementation. The Parliament was to encapsulate the truth of each religion, truth that was guaranteed by the eminence and strength of conviction of the delegates, their presence and authority, given the fair and equal opportunity to speak, unconstrained by hostility, criticism, or debate. The rules successfully controlled "dangerous" speech, random and voluntary speech. They acted nevertheless to limit what could be said about Buddhism and to undermine the authority of what was said when it contradicted Christian expectations. The rules, however, remained flexible enough to allow the dominant Christian opinion to be expressed throughout. Most important was the effect of their frequent declaration that assured the truth of the proceedings. The publication was presented with the guarantee that it contained the truth of the present state of religion in the world. In particular, it contained the truth of Buddhism as presented by properly qualified "true believers" speaking in an atmosphere of professed tolerance without fear of contradiction, argument, or censure.

ALTERITY: Buddhism as the "Other" of Christianity

Buddhism held a unique place at the World's Parliament of Religions. More than any other non-Christian religion it was the "other" of Christianity. Its function was not xenos, the radically different and totally "not-us" of the "heathen," "idolatrous" Hinduism of missionary rhetoric, or of Islam, which at this event remained beyond the pale,1 but that of alterity. Buddhism was recognizably similar, a religion comparable with Christianity, but differing from it precisely on those points at issue in the debates of the time. The crucial issues were the nature and existence of God, the divinity of Jesus, the immortality of the soul, and the contingent questions of morality and ethics. The centrality of these issues to the World's Parliament of Religions is apparent in Barrows's summary of the proceedings. The first three topics listed for discussion were "What the Various Faiths Had to Say concerning God," "The Nature of Man," and "On the Importance of Religion," a forum that provided an opportunity for most speakers to expound upon the impossibility of morality and ethical society without a Christian sense of Deity and belief in the immortal soul of man.2

This Buddhism was not the religion of any Asian practice but the reified product of Western discourse. The very term "Buddhism" is a Western invention. High Priest Hikkaduve Sumangala drew the Parliament's attention to the fact that the Sinhalese were followers of the arya dharma, "miscalled Buddhism by Western scholars."3 The term itself signals the way that Christian presuppositions informed Buddhist studies, focusing on the life of the Founder and his actual teachings as recorded in the sacred texts. The Buddha was the human counterpart of Jesus.

By the time of the Parliament, the preceding decades of debate and scholarship had established and agreed upon certain facts: Buddhism was founded by a historical man, Sakyamuni, who had taught a system of ethical philosophy that had later (for variously contended reasons) developed features of a religion. This Buddhism was atheistic or at least agnostic, denied the existence of an immortal soul, and taught self-reliance rather than reliance on a savior. Both supporters and detractors also agreed that the teachings of the Buddha had much in common with contemporary Western philosophy. The division of Southern and Northern Buddhism was generally accepted. Southern Buddhism was the Buddhism of the Pali texts, associated with the Buddhist practices of Ceylon, Siam, and Burma. These preserved the "essence" of Buddhism, variously referred to as "Pure Buddhism," "Original Buddhism," or "Real Buddhism." Northern Buddhism was the Buddhism of Sanskrit texts and their derivatives in the languages of northern Asia. This was the Mahayana, considered to be a later corruption of the Founder's teachings. Southern Buddhism was "Protestant"; Northern Buddhism was "Romish."

So well established were these "truths" of Buddhism that Western scholars quite confidently corrected Asian Buddhist authorities who attempted to modify them. The Reverend Dr. F. F. Ellinwood, for example, wrote at length explaining the real meaning of nirvana to Japanese Buddhist abbot Shaku Soen.4 Eminent Pali scholar T. W. Rhys Davids also criticized Japanese delegate Ashitsu Jitsuzen's understanding of this key term. According to Rhys Davids, Ashitsu's paper at the World's Parliament of Religions demonstrated "how astounding is the gulf on all sides between popular beliefs and the conclusions of scholarship."5 Western scholars alone possessed the truth of Buddhism. Asian practitioners became "merely nominal Buddhists who know little if anything about genuine Buddhism as elucidated in the texts."6