Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia
Posted: Wed Oct 30, 2019 12:43 am
Part 1 of 3
The First Buddhist Mission to the West: Charles Pfoundes and the London Buddhist mission of 1889 – 1892 [Buddhist Propagation Society]
by Brian Bocking, University College Cork; Laurence Cox, National University of Ireland Maynooth; and Shin‘ichi Yoshinaga, Maizuru National College of Technology
The Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions (http://www.basr.ac.uk)
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
ABSTRACT
This article challenges two general assumptions shared by scholars of Western Buddhism: (1) that the earliest Buddhist missions to the West were those established in California from 1899 onwards; and (2) that Ananda Metteyya‘s (Allan Bennett‘s) London mission of 1908 was the first Buddhist mission to London and thus to Europe. Recent collaborative research by scholars in Ireland and Japan demonstrates instead that the Japanese-sponsored 'Buddhist Propagation Society' (BPS) launched in London in 1889 and led for three years by the Irish-born Japanese Buddhist Charles Pfoundes predates both of the above-mentioned 'first' Buddhist missions. In this article we offer a first attempt to document the nature, activities and significance of the London BPS, drawing on Japanese and UK sources to examine Pfoundes' role and that of his Japanese sponsors. We discuss the nature of Pfoundes' Buddhism, the strategy and activities of the London BPS and the reasons for its eventual demise. The conclusion examines the links between the BPS and the later 'first' Japanese Buddhist missions in California and asks what hidden connection there might be between Pfoundes' missionary campaign in London in 1889-92 and Ananda Metteyya‘s return from Burma as the 'first' Buddhist missionary to London, almost two decades later.
* * *
Early Buddhist missions to the West: the conventional history
In April 1908 the Rangoon-ordained Buddhist monk Ananda Metteyya (Allan Bennett, 1872-1923) arrived in London with a party of Burmese sponsors. Ananda Metteyya‘s very presence in the capital, as a yellow-robed, shaven-headed monk demonstrating by example that it was (just) possible for a European to follow the strict vinaya regime in Edwardian London, aroused a good deal of interest in the press and among the public. In addition to preaching by example, Ananda Metteyya -- not a gifted orator -- delivered some talks on Buddhist thought and practice and gave interviews to the press.1 Within six months he was en route back to Burma.2 This visit is commonly regarded as the epochal first Buddhist mission to Europe, and for many writers marks the 'real' beginning of Buddhism-as-a-lived-religion in the UK.3
While Ananda Metteyya‘s 1908 mission to London has long been identified as a starting-point for the story of 'Buddhism in Britain', students of Western Buddhism are by now well aware that it was not the first Buddhist mission to the West. Japanese Buddhist missions, oriented mainly towards expatriate Japanese but with active Western adherents, had developed in California from 1899 onwards4 and these West Coast missions are now considered by scholars to be the earliest Buddhist missions to the West (Tweed 2000).
In this article, we set out to demonstrate that the first London Buddhist mission was in fact established in 1889, predating even the Californian missions by a decade. From 1889 to 1892, the Irish-born Japanese Buddhist Charles J. W. Pfoundes (1840-1907) headed an official Buddhist mission known as the 'Buddhist Propagation Society'. This was based in Westminster, operated throughout London and its suburbs and was the first and indeed only foreign outpost of the Kaigai Senkyo Kai (lit. 'Overseas Propagation Society' but normally translated 'Buddhist Propagation Society'), an initiative of a group of reformist Jodo Shinshu (True Pure Land) Buddhists based in Kyoto.
The Buddhist Propagation Society in London and Pfoundes' role in it were of course known to, and publicised by, his Buddhist sponsors in Japan at the time5 and at least one contemporary Japanese account6 was available to Notto Thelle, who in 1987 wrote:
Thelle deserves credit for drawing attention to Pfoundes, who had remained unnoticed by other scholars, but Thelle had only limited information, some of which has been superseded by recent discoveries. For example, Pfoundes did not leave Japan after his return from London in early 1893 but remained there, resident and working in a variety of roles in the port city of Kobe where he died in 1907 and is buried in the foreigner‘s cemetery.7 Thelle portrays Pfoundes as little more than a transient foreigner, a pale version of the exotic Theosophical 'White Buddhist' Olcott, but in fact by 1890 Pfoundes had become a fierce opponent of Theosophy. Far from being a transient visitor like Olcott, Pfoundes spent a total of 26 years of his life in Japan and in 1899 even applied for Japanese nationality (Ruxton 2008, Bocking 2013). Ironically, it is because Pfoundes did not return to London but instead died alone in Kobe that his pioneering activities on behalf of Buddhism in the West were forgotten, while Ananda Metteyya‘s brief visit almost two decades later came to be remembered, through his later colleagues in London, as the 'first' Buddhist mission to the capital.
Beyond Thelle‘s brief depiction, Pfoundes' name has been remembered elsewhere but for a quite different reason. A collection of his newspaper columns on diverse aspects of Japanese art, folklore and customs was published by The Japan Herald in Yokohama in 1875 under the title Fuso mimi bukuro or A Budget of Japanese Notes. This work, similar to and subsequently overshadowed by Basil Hall Chamberlain's Things Japanese: Being Notes on Various Subjects Connected with Japan (1890), remains widely available and is still cited occasionally in modern scholarship, for example by Hendry (1981).
With the very recent advent of digital technologies which enable searches for lost fragments of information across thousands of local newspapers, popular magazines and archive collections, many new details of Pfoundes' remarkable life have now come to light.8 In 2013, Bocking offered a first brief biography, based on some of this new evidence (Bocking 2013). That article was however concerned mainly with Pfoundes' activities between his return to Japan from London in 1893 and his death in 1907. Of the putative 'London Buddhist Mission' Bocking could say at the time only that:
Further research since 2013 has generated a great deal of new material specifically on the BPS in London, and the present article attempts to write that 'unwritten‘ chapter, at least in outline9.
The role of Mr Okazaki Hideki, a researcher from Matsue who had become interested in Pfoundes' connections with that city, should be acknowledged here. Mr Okazaki first found (in Nakanishi, 1892) a reproduction of the decorative 2-sided leaflet in Japanese and English used by Pfoundes in London to advertise the 'Buddhist Propagation Society‘.10 With confirmation that the English name of Pfoundes' London organisation was simply the 'Buddhist Propagation Society‘ and with his name and address indicating that the BPS had more than a nominal presence in London, we began searching new sources and were able to unearth numerous fragmentary references to the BPS in newspapers and magazines of the time and to uncover the remarkable extent of Pfoundes‘ engagement in Buddhist missionary work in London.
The main sources of information on Pfoundes' London Buddhist mission are:
• Reports from London in the magazine Kaigai Bukkyo Jijo (a journal published in Kyoto which reported on Buddhism in the West for Japanese Buddhists);
• Articles by Pfoundes and announcements and reports of his lecture meetings in The Two Worlds (UK weekly spiritualist newspaper);
• Announcements in The National Reformer (weekly secularist / radical newspaper);
• Notices in Reynolds’ Weekly Newspaper, published each Sunday with news of forthcoming public talks and events across London;
• Other local London and provincial newspapers;
• Material submitted by Pfoundes in 1902-3 to the organisers of the Lewis & Clark centennial exposition planned for Portland, 1905 ('President‘s Office Correspondence').
Who was Charles Pfoundes?
In letters written after his return to Japan, Pfoundes described himself as follows:
Pfoundes' life can be divided into four fairly distinct periods: (1) early life up to age 23 when he landed in Japan; (2) his first period of residence in Japan, 1863-1876; (3) the London years, 1878-1892 and (4) return to Japan, 1893 to his death in 1907.11
Pfoundes was born Charles James William Pounds in 1840 in Waterford or Wexford, Ireland, to Irish Anglican parents bankrupted during the 1845 Famine. His father James Pounds and mother Caroline Elam separated in 1846 when Charles was 6, leaving him motherless. He emigrated alone to Australia in 1854 aged about 14 and promptly joined the colonial (Australian) navy, subsequently captaining a Siamese naval sailing ship and spending some time in China.
Pounds changed his name to 'Pfoundes', which reflects the Japanese spelling of 'Pounds'12 soon after arriving in Japan in 1863, five years before the epochal Meiji Restoration. For employment reasons he may have added some years to his age.13 He quickly became fluent in Japanese and was fascinated by Japanese customs and culture, topics that preoccupied him for the rest of his life. He also began collecting Japanese art and sculpture. Beginning as a (British) policeman in Nagasaki port, he worked in a variety of roles in different parts of Japan, finding a niche as a cultural mediator between the Japanese and foreign diplomats and as an interpreter/guide, newspaper columnist, importer and lecturer.
In 1870-71 Pfoundes accompanied some high-ranking Japanese government and business figures to Europe and America. This was part of a wider wave of early Meijiera missions to the West, which played an important role in Japanese reflections on religion and society and relationships between Buddhism and Christianity (Hayashi et al. 2014). By the early 1870s, capitalising on his naval experience, he had been appointed to a senior (Director‘s Office) position in the embryonic native Japanese steamship industry. He lived in several parts of Japan, later listing these as ―Nagasaki 1863-4-6; Yedo (Tokyo) 1866 & 8, 71-6. Hakodate 1865 &c.; …" 14
Pfoundes left Japan in 1876, tasked with setting up an exhibition of Japanese art in America, later writing that:
The 'disposal' took the form of a substantial auction of 627 items16 which made Pfoundes a significant amount of money, though not enough to buy property or relieve him of the need to earn a living. By his own account Pfoundes travelled extensively in Europe during 1877-8. In March 1878 he married 22-year old Rosa Alice Hill in the Liverpool Registry Office and the newlyweds set up home in London. He secured a lowly clerical position at the Admiralty; an appropriate employer but a far lower position than he might have hoped for, given his colonial navy background and experience in the Japanese shipping industry (Bocking 2013, Cox 2013). For the next fourteen years Pfoundes worked in London as an Admiralty scribe or clerk but in his private capacity gained admission to a wide range of London‘s learned societies and made a considerable name for himself as a prolific speaker on mainly Japanese and Oriental topics and would-be organiser of various cultural projects, including a Nipon (sic) Institute or Japan Society that began promisingly in 1879 but failed to flourish.
How Captain Pfoundes became a Buddhist
Thelle says that Pfoundes 'reportedly' lived 7-8 years in Buddhist monasteries in his first period in Japan, but gives no source. This may rely on Madame Blavatsky, whose Secret Doctrine (1881) quotes Pfoundes‘ account of the Shinto creation story and asserts that "Captain C. Pfoundes studied for nearly nine years in the monasteries of Japan the religion underlying the various sects of the land. ...".17 Writing from London in 1889, Pfoundes told his potential Japanese sponsors that he had stayed in at least three monasteries ('Tozenji, Sengakuji, and Daichuji‘) in the Shiba area during his residence in Japan. However, while he may have stayed in monasteries there is no evidence that he became a Buddhist in any meaningful sense before 1875, nor indeed that he took any formal Buddhist ordination or initiation before his return to Japan in 1893.18 He did study the history of Buddhism and current religious practices during his first period in Japan, as reflected in his Japan Mail articles republished in Fuso mimi bukuro. However, there is nothing in Fuso mimi bukuro to suggest anything but the view of an attentive and curious outsider who has read up on Japanese Buddhist history and observed at first hand the day-to-day customs and practices of different classes. Pfoundes‘ approach to Buddhism in these early pieces is neutral and descriptive when talking about the past, and condescending when he refers to the condition of Buddhism amidst Japan‘s rapid modernisation. The very first item in Fuso mimi bukuro is entitled 'Superstitions‘ and includes Pfoundes‘ opinion of modern Buddhism and Buddhist priests.
He recognises that Buddhism had suffered egregiously in the process of Japan‘s modernisation, with multiple reforms designed to disestablish Buddhism and marginalise the role of the clergy in the modern state:
The old-fashioned institutional Japanese Buddhism that Pfoundes encountered at first hand before 1868 thus seems to have held little personal attraction for him and it is not until 1888, when he had been living in London for almost 10 years, that we find any suggestion of a personal engagement with Buddhist texts, ideas and practices. In an article headed 'Divyatchakchus: The "Infinite Perception" of Japanese Esotericism by C. Pfoundes (OMOIE)‘19 published in the first (May 1888) issue of the journal Theosophical Siftings, he argues that modern science has its role, but true wisdom does not change through the ages. It can be attained only by those few advanced truth-seekers who are prepared to look beyond the narrow confines of their own religious tradition and pursue a higher path.
A comparison of the 1888 'Divyatchakchus' article with his writings on Buddhism over the following summer of 1889 throws some light on the stages in Pfoundes' transition over a 12-month period from his fairly conventional position during the 1880s, as peripatetic speaker on Japanese and other topics, to his self-declaration as an officially appointed Buddhist missionary in October 1889. 'Divyatchakchus' shows that Pfoundes did engage positively, if briefly, with Theosophical thought during the late 1880s and presumably knew some of the leading Theosophists in London.20 In fact during 1888 he contributed half a dozen other articles on topics including Genghis Khan and Japanese folklore to the Theosophical journal Lucifer. However, a final Lucifer letter on 'Is the Bud(d)hist an Atheist?‘ (June 1889, Vol. 4, 351), marked the end of any friendly relations with the Theosophist camp.
'Divyatchakchus‘ is markedly different in tone and content from Pfoundes' next significant publication on Buddhism for an English audience, produced a year later. 'Buddhism, What it was, and is‘ appeared in three parts between May and August 1889 in the Spiritualist periodical The Two Worlds and can be regarded as Pfoundes' Buddhist manifesto. The Two Worlds, a nationwide magazine owned and edited since 1887 by the renowned spiritualist Emma Hardinge Britten described itself as 'A Journal Devoted to Spiritualism, Occult Science, Ethics, Religion and Reform' and had a negative view of Theosophy from the outset.21 There is no evidence that Pfoundes was an active spiritualist himself, but evidently he found a sympathetic editor in Hardinge Britten22 and as we shall see he later used Spiritualist venues in London for talks on Buddhism which were advertised in TTW alongside the regular notices of spiritualist meetings.
In 'Divyatchakchus', Buddhism had been presented in characteristically Theosophical fashion as but one expression of a larger abstract and universalist conception of wisdom or enlightenment for which Buddhism provides a conduit. By contrast, the following year‘s TTW article seeks with increasing urgency to clarify those features of Buddhism which distinguish it from other traditions. In the first part, titled 'Buddhism, What it was, and is‘, Pfoundes argues that:
Pfoundes then offers a brief historical account, with the proviso that what matters is the practical use to which Buddhism may be put today:
He goes on to make a special appeal to the sympathy of ordinary Spiritualists, who constituted the readership of the journal and whose belief in ‗the two worlds‘ was for the most part conditioned by a Christian world-view.24
The second part of Pfoundes' TTW article appeared in July, under the simple title 'Buddhism'. It was this time prefaced by an enthusiastic note from the editor of The Two Worlds positioning Pfoundes as a learned authority on Buddhism, uniquely placed to refute spurious representations of the tradition. This is evidently a reference to Theosophy‘s controversial presentation of itself as 'Esoteric Buddhism' and the TTW’s editorial comment reflects the widening rift with the growing body of Theosophists whose belief in reincarnation was particularly offensive to Spiritualists.
Hardinge Britten wrote:
In the first part of the article, back in May, Pfoundes had sought to find commonalities between Buddhism and Spiritualism. In the second instalment he draws the two even closer, reinforcing the main Spiritualist objection to Theosophy by stating that in Buddhism
By August 1889, when the third part of the article appeared, the title had pointedly changed to 'BUDDHISM: WHAT IT IS NOT.' Here Pfoundes is explicit in his rejection of Theosophy, but also distances himself from Christianity 'or anything else' (which, since it is diplomatically unspecified, probably includes Spiritualism). He says:
In closing, Pfoundes sets out his stall as someone who has Buddhist truths to impart to those who are genuinely interested and eligible. This seems to be the point at which Pfoundes, realising that he possessed a knowledge of Buddhism exceeding that of the Theosophists, first decided to make a stand for Buddhism 'pure and simple‘, perhaps even making a dig at spiritualism by distinguishing between 'the trained spiritualist' and 'mere spiritist':
In less than twelve months, then, Pfoundes had moved from publishing in Theosophical magazines through endorsing Spiritualism and finally to criticising Theosophy and distancing himself from any other tradition than Buddhism 'pure and simple'. Yet Pfoundes knew that Buddhism as actually practised in Japan or anywhere else was by no means 'pure and simple'; he identified even in his TTW articles the malign influence of both 'a theocratic class' and excessive mystification of the teachings shading into 'superstition' (TTW Aug 23 1889, vol. 2, n.93, p494). Now, as a potential apostle of Buddhism 'pure and simple', Pfoundes had to decide, like every discerning missionary, what was core and what was peripheral to the Buddhism he would propagate to a new audience and, equally, how to lend authority to the core teachings.26
The Japanese roots of Buddhist globalisation
In the history of Meiji Buddhism, the years 1885-1899 are those of "Buddhist revival", in that many Buddhist societies, journals and schools appeared, most of which were trans-sectarian and anti-Christian in their character (Yoshinaga 2009). In effect, the common enemy, Christianity, forced Buddhists to unite without regard to sectarianism. The period from 1887-1893 was distinguished by the rise of "international communication", when Japanese Buddhists came into direct contact with European or American ―Buddhists‖ or Theosophists. Numerous Theosophical articles were published in Buddhist outlets and at least three ―white‖ Buddhists or sympathisers, Henry Steel Olcott (in 1889), Lafcadio Hearn (1890) and Pfoundes (1893), came to Japan. This "globalizing" tendency was related to one of the earliest modernizing movements, the Temperance organisation Hansei kai. Hansei kai was established in Futsū Kyōkō ('Normal School'), the Western-style middle school opened by the Nishi Honganji True Pure Land sect in 1885. The Kaigai Senkyō Kai was born of this modernizing and globalizing element within Japanese Buddhism. In March 1887, Matsuyama Matsutarō, a teacher of English at the Futsū Kyōkō, and two others wrote a letter of inquiry to the Aryan Theosophical Society, USA, to ascertain the truth of a Russian newspaper article report that "Buddhism has lately been introduced into New York and Brooklyn, and its followers are increasingly in number very rapidly"27. In response to this inquiry, the Theosophist William Q. Judge wrote as follows:
Through the network of the Theosophical Society, Matsuyama‘s letter evoked responses from America, Europe, Australia, and India. The number of letters from abroad reaching Matsuyama was large enough to encourage him and some of the staff of his school to organize a new group called Ōbei Tsūshin Kai (Society for Corresponding with Americans and Europeans ) to deal with those letters, many of which asked for some guidance on Buddhism. Matsuyama contributed a series of articles from the first issue onwards of the group‘s magazine Hansei Kai Zasshi. The Ōbei Tsūshin Kai seems to have been run on its members‘ own money. On Aug 11, 1888, they enlarged their small group into the Kaigai Senkyō Kai. Though its founding members - Matsuyama Matsutaro, Dōtsu Kojiro (editor-in-chief), Hino Gien (secretary) and others - were all from Futsū Kyoko, it proclaimed itself to be a nonsectarian organization. Its aim was "to propagate Japanese Buddhism abroad"29, not just the teachings of the Jodo Shin sect. Akamatsu Renjō, a high priest of Nishi Honganji, was the society‘s first president but his role seems to have been little more than nominal as he did not contribute an article to their organ, Kaigai Bukkyo Jijo which reported on the state of Buddhism overseas.
The first issue of the association‘s English/French language magazine The Bijou of Asia was distributed in 1888 to 270 locations in America, Britain, India, Siam30 and France31. The parallel Japanese-language journal, Kaigai Bukkyo Jijo, had started in December 1888, its first issue reprinted at least three times. The early issues of Kaigai Bukkyo Jijo contained articles and letters by Buddhists and sympathisers in America, Europe, Australia and Southern Asia such as Philangi Dasa (Carl Herman Vetterling), Francesca Arundale, Charles Johnston, Laura C. Holloway, Josephine W. Cables, Elliot B. Page, Edward Wolleb, Alexander Russell Webb, Dharmapala, and so on. Over the life of the journal Philangi Dasa was the most prolific contributor; second was Charles Pfoundes.
The founders of the Kaigai Senkyo Kai were inexperienced in missionary work. "As to the propagation of our faith, we think, it would be best for us to make our friends in Europe and America, and this could be performed by correspondence and the publication of tracts and books regarding our religion"32. Sometime in the summer of 1889, Matsuyama and his colleagues received an interesting proposal from Pfoundes in London and a sample of his articles on Buddhism. The Kaigai Senkyo Kai, it seemed, had a Japanese-speaking British missionary ready and willing to set to work propagating Buddhism in London.
The First Buddhist Mission to the West: Charles Pfoundes and the London Buddhist mission of 1889 – 1892 [Buddhist Propagation Society]
by Brian Bocking, University College Cork; Laurence Cox, National University of Ireland Maynooth; and Shin‘ichi Yoshinaga, Maizuru National College of Technology
The Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions (http://www.basr.ac.uk)
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
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ABSTRACT
This article challenges two general assumptions shared by scholars of Western Buddhism: (1) that the earliest Buddhist missions to the West were those established in California from 1899 onwards; and (2) that Ananda Metteyya‘s (Allan Bennett‘s) London mission of 1908 was the first Buddhist mission to London and thus to Europe. Recent collaborative research by scholars in Ireland and Japan demonstrates instead that the Japanese-sponsored 'Buddhist Propagation Society' (BPS) launched in London in 1889 and led for three years by the Irish-born Japanese Buddhist Charles Pfoundes predates both of the above-mentioned 'first' Buddhist missions. In this article we offer a first attempt to document the nature, activities and significance of the London BPS, drawing on Japanese and UK sources to examine Pfoundes' role and that of his Japanese sponsors. We discuss the nature of Pfoundes' Buddhism, the strategy and activities of the London BPS and the reasons for its eventual demise. The conclusion examines the links between the BPS and the later 'first' Japanese Buddhist missions in California and asks what hidden connection there might be between Pfoundes' missionary campaign in London in 1889-92 and Ananda Metteyya‘s return from Burma as the 'first' Buddhist missionary to London, almost two decades later.
* * *
Early Buddhist missions to the West: the conventional history
In April 1908 the Rangoon-ordained Buddhist monk Ananda Metteyya (Allan Bennett, 1872-1923) arrived in London with a party of Burmese sponsors. Ananda Metteyya‘s very presence in the capital, as a yellow-robed, shaven-headed monk demonstrating by example that it was (just) possible for a European to follow the strict vinaya regime in Edwardian London, aroused a good deal of interest in the press and among the public. In addition to preaching by example, Ananda Metteyya -- not a gifted orator -- delivered some talks on Buddhist thought and practice and gave interviews to the press.1 Within six months he was en route back to Burma.2 This visit is commonly regarded as the epochal first Buddhist mission to Europe, and for many writers marks the 'real' beginning of Buddhism-as-a-lived-religion in the UK.3
While Ananda Metteyya‘s 1908 mission to London has long been identified as a starting-point for the story of 'Buddhism in Britain', students of Western Buddhism are by now well aware that it was not the first Buddhist mission to the West. Japanese Buddhist missions, oriented mainly towards expatriate Japanese but with active Western adherents, had developed in California from 1899 onwards4 and these West Coast missions are now considered by scholars to be the earliest Buddhist missions to the West (Tweed 2000).
In this article, we set out to demonstrate that the first London Buddhist mission was in fact established in 1889, predating even the Californian missions by a decade. From 1889 to 1892, the Irish-born Japanese Buddhist Charles J. W. Pfoundes (1840-1907) headed an official Buddhist mission known as the 'Buddhist Propagation Society'. This was based in Westminster, operated throughout London and its suburbs and was the first and indeed only foreign outpost of the Kaigai Senkyo Kai (lit. 'Overseas Propagation Society' but normally translated 'Buddhist Propagation Society'), an initiative of a group of reformist Jodo Shinshu (True Pure Land) Buddhists based in Kyoto.
The Buddhist Propagation Society in London and Pfoundes' role in it were of course known to, and publicised by, his Buddhist sponsors in Japan at the time5 and at least one contemporary Japanese account6 was available to Notto Thelle, who in 1987 wrote:
The Society for Communication with Western Buddhists (Obei Bukkyo Tsushinkai) was founded in 1887; it was later reorganized as the Buddhist Propagation Society (Kaigai Senkyo Kai, literally Overseas Missionary Society), under the leadership of Akamatsu Renjo. Its purpose was to propagate Buddhism in the West, through missionaries and publications. A branch office was established in London in 1890, and a journal was published, entitled Bijou of Asia [Ajia no hōshu].
…[a]nother Western Buddhist, C. Pfoundes, also supported Japanese Buddhists against Christianity. He had first come to Japan in the 1860s as an officer in the British navy and remained for about twelve years, of which he reportedly spent seven or eight years in Buddhist temples. As an admirer of the ancient Japanese civilization and of Buddhism, he had dedicated much of his time to lecturing on Buddhism in the United States (1876-1878) and in England (1878-1893). He served as secretary of the London branch of the Buddhist Propagation Society and came to Japan again in 1893 at the invitation of his Buddhist friends. In his many meetings he appealed to the national sentiment and attacked Christian missionaries for slighting Buddhism and despising Japan as a barbarian country. Both Olcott and Pfoundes left Japan after controversies with their Japanese sponsors.
Thelle deserves credit for drawing attention to Pfoundes, who had remained unnoticed by other scholars, but Thelle had only limited information, some of which has been superseded by recent discoveries. For example, Pfoundes did not leave Japan after his return from London in early 1893 but remained there, resident and working in a variety of roles in the port city of Kobe where he died in 1907 and is buried in the foreigner‘s cemetery.7 Thelle portrays Pfoundes as little more than a transient foreigner, a pale version of the exotic Theosophical 'White Buddhist' Olcott, but in fact by 1890 Pfoundes had become a fierce opponent of Theosophy. Far from being a transient visitor like Olcott, Pfoundes spent a total of 26 years of his life in Japan and in 1899 even applied for Japanese nationality (Ruxton 2008, Bocking 2013). Ironically, it is because Pfoundes did not return to London but instead died alone in Kobe that his pioneering activities on behalf of Buddhism in the West were forgotten, while Ananda Metteyya‘s brief visit almost two decades later came to be remembered, through his later colleagues in London, as the 'first' Buddhist mission to the capital.
Beyond Thelle‘s brief depiction, Pfoundes' name has been remembered elsewhere but for a quite different reason. A collection of his newspaper columns on diverse aspects of Japanese art, folklore and customs was published by The Japan Herald in Yokohama in 1875 under the title Fuso mimi bukuro or A Budget of Japanese Notes. This work, similar to and subsequently overshadowed by Basil Hall Chamberlain's Things Japanese: Being Notes on Various Subjects Connected with Japan (1890), remains widely available and is still cited occasionally in modern scholarship, for example by Hendry (1981).
With the very recent advent of digital technologies which enable searches for lost fragments of information across thousands of local newspapers, popular magazines and archive collections, many new details of Pfoundes' remarkable life have now come to light.8 In 2013, Bocking offered a first brief biography, based on some of this new evidence (Bocking 2013). That article was however concerned mainly with Pfoundes' activities between his return to Japan from London in 1893 and his death in 1907. Of the putative 'London Buddhist Mission' Bocking could say at the time only that:
[a]bout this time [the early 1890s] Pfoundes became the London representative of the modern Jodo Shinshu-backed Japanese Buddhist missionary society the Kaigai Senkyo Kai, in which role he reportedly warned the young scholar Takakusu Junjiro away from the London Theosophists and hence towards Max Muller (Akai 2009, 190); a significant Weberian moment in the history of Japanese Buddhology, if so. The other activities, if there were any, of Pfoundes' London Japanese Buddhist outpost remain undocumented; perhaps an unwritten - and very early - chapter in the history of Buddhism in the UK.
Further research since 2013 has generated a great deal of new material specifically on the BPS in London, and the present article attempts to write that 'unwritten‘ chapter, at least in outline9.
The role of Mr Okazaki Hideki, a researcher from Matsue who had become interested in Pfoundes' connections with that city, should be acknowledged here. Mr Okazaki first found (in Nakanishi, 1892) a reproduction of the decorative 2-sided leaflet in Japanese and English used by Pfoundes in London to advertise the 'Buddhist Propagation Society‘.10 With confirmation that the English name of Pfoundes' London organisation was simply the 'Buddhist Propagation Society‘ and with his name and address indicating that the BPS had more than a nominal presence in London, we began searching new sources and were able to unearth numerous fragmentary references to the BPS in newspapers and magazines of the time and to uncover the remarkable extent of Pfoundes‘ engagement in Buddhist missionary work in London.
The main sources of information on Pfoundes' London Buddhist mission are:
• Reports from London in the magazine Kaigai Bukkyo Jijo (a journal published in Kyoto which reported on Buddhism in the West for Japanese Buddhists);
• Articles by Pfoundes and announcements and reports of his lecture meetings in The Two Worlds (UK weekly spiritualist newspaper);
• Announcements in The National Reformer (weekly secularist / radical newspaper);
• Notices in Reynolds’ Weekly Newspaper, published each Sunday with news of forthcoming public talks and events across London;
• Other local London and provincial newspapers;
• Material submitted by Pfoundes in 1902-3 to the organisers of the Lewis & Clark centennial exposition planned for Portland, 1905 ('President‘s Office Correspondence').
Who was Charles Pfoundes?
In letters written after his return to Japan, Pfoundes described himself as follows:
"Captain Charles James William Pfoundes F.R.G.S., Rl. U. Service Inst., Corr. Memb. Geog. Soc. Japan, Hon. Fel. Soc. Sc. Lit. & Art, Fel. Rl. Asiatic Soc., Fel. Rl. Historical Soc., Fel. Rl. Colonial Soc., Founder, Orientalists‘ International Union of the Pacific Hemisphere, Author, Orientalist, Lecturer, Initiated to Buddhist Sects, by Executive at Chief Monasteries, Esoteric &c., &c., Author of Fu-so mimi bukuro, Contributor to Current Literature in Japan and Abroad, Europe, America, &c., Specialist in Japanese History, Religion, Art, Literature, Olden Time Customs, Life of the People, &c."
The Royal British Colonial Society of Artists (RBC)[1] was founded in 1887 as the Royal Anglo Australian Society of Artists[2] and received its royal charter under its later name in 1907.[3]
Its members were artists from Britain (notably members of the Newlyn School), South Africa, Canada, India, New Zealand and Australia.[2]
It is known to have held an exhibition at the Royal Institute Galleries in London in 1937[4] and this is believed to have been its last.[2]
References
1. Dale, Rodney (1997). The Wordsworth Dictionary of Abbreviations and Acronyms. Wordsworth. p. 136. ISBN 9781853263859.
2. "Royal British Colonial Society of Artists". Artist Biographies. Retrieved 5 June 2016.
3. "News in Brief: Royal British Colonial Society of Artists". The Times. 27 September 1909. p. 10. Retrieved 5 June 2016. The King has been graciously pleased to grant a charter and diploma to ... The Society, which has now been in existence 21 years ...
4. "Art Within the Empire: Characteristic examples". The Times. 8 May 1937. Retrieved 5 June 2016.
-- Royal British Colonial Society of Artists, by Wikipedia
Pfoundes' life can be divided into four fairly distinct periods: (1) early life up to age 23 when he landed in Japan; (2) his first period of residence in Japan, 1863-1876; (3) the London years, 1878-1892 and (4) return to Japan, 1893 to his death in 1907.11
Pfoundes was born Charles James William Pounds in 1840 in Waterford or Wexford, Ireland, to Irish Anglican parents bankrupted during the 1845 Famine. His father James Pounds and mother Caroline Elam separated in 1846 when Charles was 6, leaving him motherless. He emigrated alone to Australia in 1854 aged about 14 and promptly joined the colonial (Australian) navy, subsequently captaining a Siamese naval sailing ship and spending some time in China.
Pounds changed his name to 'Pfoundes', which reflects the Japanese spelling of 'Pounds'12 soon after arriving in Japan in 1863, five years before the epochal Meiji Restoration. For employment reasons he may have added some years to his age.13 He quickly became fluent in Japanese and was fascinated by Japanese customs and culture, topics that preoccupied him for the rest of his life. He also began collecting Japanese art and sculpture. Beginning as a (British) policeman in Nagasaki port, he worked in a variety of roles in different parts of Japan, finding a niche as a cultural mediator between the Japanese and foreign diplomats and as an interpreter/guide, newspaper columnist, importer and lecturer.
In 1870-71 Pfoundes accompanied some high-ranking Japanese government and business figures to Europe and America. This was part of a wider wave of early Meijiera missions to the West, which played an important role in Japanese reflections on religion and society and relationships between Buddhism and Christianity (Hayashi et al. 2014). By the early 1870s, capitalising on his naval experience, he had been appointed to a senior (Director‘s Office) position in the embryonic native Japanese steamship industry. He lived in several parts of Japan, later listing these as ―Nagasaki 1863-4-6; Yedo (Tokyo) 1866 & 8, 71-6. Hakodate 1865 &c.; …" 14
Pfoundes left Japan in 1876, tasked with setting up an exhibition of Japanese art in America, later writing that:
I assisted in purchasing and had charge of the packing and shipping, of a very large quantity of valuable goods chiefly fabricated for Exhibition at the Philadelphia Centennial; and went with them to New York, managing their exhibition in Old Chickering Hall &c. and subsequent disposal. …15
The 'disposal' took the form of a substantial auction of 627 items16 which made Pfoundes a significant amount of money, though not enough to buy property or relieve him of the need to earn a living. By his own account Pfoundes travelled extensively in Europe during 1877-8. In March 1878 he married 22-year old Rosa Alice Hill in the Liverpool Registry Office and the newlyweds set up home in London. He secured a lowly clerical position at the Admiralty; an appropriate employer but a far lower position than he might have hoped for, given his colonial navy background and experience in the Japanese shipping industry (Bocking 2013, Cox 2013). For the next fourteen years Pfoundes worked in London as an Admiralty scribe or clerk but in his private capacity gained admission to a wide range of London‘s learned societies and made a considerable name for himself as a prolific speaker on mainly Japanese and Oriental topics and would-be organiser of various cultural projects, including a Nipon (sic) Institute or Japan Society that began promisingly in 1879 but failed to flourish.
How Captain Pfoundes became a Buddhist
Thelle says that Pfoundes 'reportedly' lived 7-8 years in Buddhist monasteries in his first period in Japan, but gives no source. This may rely on Madame Blavatsky, whose Secret Doctrine (1881) quotes Pfoundes‘ account of the Shinto creation story and asserts that "Captain C. Pfoundes studied for nearly nine years in the monasteries of Japan the religion underlying the various sects of the land. ...".17 Writing from London in 1889, Pfoundes told his potential Japanese sponsors that he had stayed in at least three monasteries ('Tozenji, Sengakuji, and Daichuji‘) in the Shiba area during his residence in Japan. However, while he may have stayed in monasteries there is no evidence that he became a Buddhist in any meaningful sense before 1875, nor indeed that he took any formal Buddhist ordination or initiation before his return to Japan in 1893.18 He did study the history of Buddhism and current religious practices during his first period in Japan, as reflected in his Japan Mail articles republished in Fuso mimi bukuro. However, there is nothing in Fuso mimi bukuro to suggest anything but the view of an attentive and curious outsider who has read up on Japanese Buddhist history and observed at first hand the day-to-day customs and practices of different classes. Pfoundes‘ approach to Buddhism in these early pieces is neutral and descriptive when talking about the past, and condescending when he refers to the condition of Buddhism amidst Japan‘s rapid modernisation. The very first item in Fuso mimi bukuro is entitled 'Superstitions‘ and includes Pfoundes‘ opinion of modern Buddhism and Buddhist priests.
A full description of the superstitions of any nation involves no easy task, and the delineation of those of such a nation as this, in such a manner as to enable the reader to realize their hold over the native mind, is more than we can expect to accomplish. In giving a sketch of some of the most common, we are only selecting exemplars from a thousand forms that are either local, temporary or of but slight consideration. An instructive and amusing essay on this subject might be written, which would throw no little light on the real depth of the religious feeling of the Japanese and of their capacity for entertaining a higher form of faith than any they now possess. There is a large class of young students growing up who sneer at anything and everything native; but the great majority still resort, as did their ancestors, to all kinds of charms, prayers, incantations, amulets &c. to bring good luck, or ward off evil. In Sintooism [sic], as we term it, there is but little room for superstition or ghost stories, so that we are thrown upon the conclusion that the Buddhist priesthood are more or less the supporters of the gross follies which, in the form of superstitions, exist among all classes in this country. (Pfoundes 1875, 1-2)
Inoue did not attempt to deny that Buddhism as it could be observed in contemporary Japan was in a degraded state and in dire need of reform. Rather, in the mode of all rhetoricians attempting to stir outrage and action, the picture he painted was exaggerated. “Present-day Buddhism is practiced among foolish laymen, it is handed down by foolish clergy, and it is full of depravities; in short it is not free of becoming a barbaric doctrine.”43 This was “nothing intrinsic to Buddhism”; Buddhism simply reflected the “corrupt customs of society.”44 Inoue’s own efforts to effect change included promoting Buddhist philanthropy and campaigning against non-Buddhist superstition, folk belief in ghosts and the supernatural.45
-- Chapter 6. Buddhist Revival and Japanese Nationalism, from "Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Columbian Exposition," by Judith Snodgrass
He recognises that Buddhism had suffered egregiously in the process of Japan‘s modernisation, with multiple reforms designed to disestablish Buddhism and marginalise the role of the clergy in the modern state:
'Until the last few years the priests drew large revenues from the Government and from high officials – latterly they have been thrown on their own resources and become beggars literally‘ (Pfoundes 1875, 132)
The old-fashioned institutional Japanese Buddhism that Pfoundes encountered at first hand before 1868 thus seems to have held little personal attraction for him and it is not until 1888, when he had been living in London for almost 10 years, that we find any suggestion of a personal engagement with Buddhist texts, ideas and practices. In an article headed 'Divyatchakchus: The "Infinite Perception" of Japanese Esotericism by C. Pfoundes (OMOIE)‘19 published in the first (May 1888) issue of the journal Theosophical Siftings, he argues that modern science has its role, but true wisdom does not change through the ages. It can be attained only by those few advanced truth-seekers who are prepared to look beyond the narrow confines of their own religious tradition and pursue a higher path.
… Passing through the stages of scientific teaching of modern times, we learn minor details, unknown of yore, it is true; but the great principles still remain absolutely unchanged. The merely mechanical sciences, chemistry, geology, and other branches give us details; of matter we have a little more knowledge, but of LIFE we have learned absolutely nothing, while of psychology we know less than the ancients.
Will it therefore not well repay the true sincere student to hearken to the wisdom of old? The attainment of Transcendent Intuitiveness is not utterly beyond the capability of some, though to many so high an ideal may be hopeless.
From the Amitabah [sic] (Sutra) we learn that there are five faculties of intellectual power. …
A comparison of the 1888 'Divyatchakchus' article with his writings on Buddhism over the following summer of 1889 throws some light on the stages in Pfoundes' transition over a 12-month period from his fairly conventional position during the 1880s, as peripatetic speaker on Japanese and other topics, to his self-declaration as an officially appointed Buddhist missionary in October 1889. 'Divyatchakchus' shows that Pfoundes did engage positively, if briefly, with Theosophical thought during the late 1880s and presumably knew some of the leading Theosophists in London.20 In fact during 1888 he contributed half a dozen other articles on topics including Genghis Khan and Japanese folklore to the Theosophical journal Lucifer. However, a final Lucifer letter on 'Is the Bud(d)hist an Atheist?‘ (June 1889, Vol. 4, 351), marked the end of any friendly relations with the Theosophist camp.
'Divyatchakchus‘ is markedly different in tone and content from Pfoundes' next significant publication on Buddhism for an English audience, produced a year later. 'Buddhism, What it was, and is‘ appeared in three parts between May and August 1889 in the Spiritualist periodical The Two Worlds and can be regarded as Pfoundes' Buddhist manifesto. The Two Worlds, a nationwide magazine owned and edited since 1887 by the renowned spiritualist Emma Hardinge Britten described itself as 'A Journal Devoted to Spiritualism, Occult Science, Ethics, Religion and Reform' and had a negative view of Theosophy from the outset.21 There is no evidence that Pfoundes was an active spiritualist himself, but evidently he found a sympathetic editor in Hardinge Britten22 and as we shall see he later used Spiritualist venues in London for talks on Buddhism which were advertised in TTW alongside the regular notices of spiritualist meetings.
In 'Divyatchakchus', Buddhism had been presented in characteristically Theosophical fashion as but one expression of a larger abstract and universalist conception of wisdom or enlightenment for which Buddhism provides a conduit. By contrast, the following year‘s TTW article seeks with increasing urgency to clarify those features of Buddhism which distinguish it from other traditions. In the first part, titled 'Buddhism, What it was, and is‘, Pfoundes argues that:
BUDHISM23 is not a religion in the strict sense of the word, though it is religious, and in many of the sects, so numerous, there is much admixture of religion. It is now so frequently alluded to by writers and speakers amongst spiritualistic circles to a very large extent, that some brief account of this ancient and wide-spread faith is offered to our readers.
Pfoundes then offers a brief historical account, with the proviso that what matters is the practical use to which Buddhism may be put today:
Buddhism must be considered a successful effort to restore the purity of religious thought, the freedom of human action in spiritual matters, and we are more concerned in knowing what has come down to us for our use, than in the discussion of the exact dates. (TTW 17 May 1889 p326)
He goes on to make a special appeal to the sympathy of ordinary Spiritualists, who constituted the readership of the journal and whose belief in ‗the two worlds‘ was for the most part conditioned by a Christian world-view.24
To spiritualists it will be of interest to know that much of what is now openly advocated by their leaders is BUDHISM pure and simple - temperance in diet, abstinence from stimulants and coarse food, vegetarianism, kindness, gentleness, courtesy, charity, all the Christian virtues included. (TTW 17 May 1889 p326)
The second part of Pfoundes' TTW article appeared in July, under the simple title 'Buddhism'. It was this time prefaced by an enthusiastic note from the editor of The Two Worlds positioning Pfoundes as a learned authority on Buddhism, uniquely placed to refute spurious representations of the tradition. This is evidently a reference to Theosophy‘s controversial presentation of itself as 'Esoteric Buddhism' and the TTW’s editorial comment reflects the widening rift with the growing body of Theosophists whose belief in reincarnation was particularly offensive to Spiritualists.
Of course, the teaching about the members of man's being, the doctrine of karma and reincarnation, are truths. But materialism has here been woven into all these truths. In Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism a genuinely spiritual outlook is combined with an eminently materialistic tendency — a combination that it was not easy to detect because there was scarcely anyone who could discern that something entirely materialistic had insinuated itself into a spiritual teaching — something that was materialistic not merely in the intellectual sense but materialistic as opposed to a spiritual view of the world. — I refer to what is said in Esoteric Buddhism about the “Eighth Sphere”. [note 3]
Here, then, are teachings which contain a great deal that is correct and into which this utterly materialistic and misleading statement about the Eighth Sphere has been woven. This culminates in the assertion made in Esoteric Buddhism that the Eighth Sphere is the Moon. Owing to its journalistic qualities and the good style in which it is written, the book was a tremendous draw and captivated many hearts. Consequently these readers imbibed, not the true teaching concerning the Eighth Sphere, but the strange assertion made by Sinnett that the Moon is the Eighth Sphere.
So there was Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism. The book was written at the time when Blavatsky, after all the happenings of which I have told you, had already been driven into the one-sided sphere of influence of those Indian occultists who belonged to the left and had special aims of their own. Hence teachings relating to the constitution of man and to reincarnation and karma are given in Esoteric Buddhism. It is therefore written in opposition to those who wanted the knowledge of reincarnation to be allowed to disappear. This will also show you how vehemently the conflict was being waged.
Blavatsky was connected with American spiritualists who wanted to let the teaching of reincarnation disappear. Mediumship was a means to this end and so that method was adopted. As Blavatsky revolted, she was expelled and came more and more under the sway of the Indian occultists; she was driven into their hands. This led to a conflict between American and Indian views in the sphere of occultism. On the one side there was the strong tendency to let the teaching of reincarnation vanish from the scene, and on the other, the urge to bring this teaching into the world but in a form that took advantage of the materialistic leanings of the nineteenth century.
This was a possibility if the teaching about the Eighth Sphere was presented as Sinnett presented it in the book Esoteric Buddhism. There are a certain number of other facts which are perhaps of sufficient importance to be at least indicated — because I do not want to shock you by what I am saying but to explain the spiritual principle upon which our own standpoint is based.
Two difficulties had arisen as a result of the way in which the teaching about the Eighth Sphere had been presented in Sinnett's book. One of the difficulties had been created by Blavatsky herself. She knew that what Sinnett had written on this subject was false [note 4] but on the other hand she was in the hands of those who desired that the false teaching should be inculcated into humanity. Therefore she tried — as you can read in The Secret Doctrine — she tried to correct in a certain way this conception of the Eighth Sphere and matters relevant to it. But she did this in such a way as to cause confusion. Hence there is a certain discrepancy between Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism and Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine. Blavatsky corrected in a way that actually reinforced the bias of the left-wing Indian occultists. She tried by very peculiar means, as we shall presently see, to let more of the truth come to light in order to overshadow the error. She was therefore obliged, in turn, to create a counterweight, for from the standpoint of the Indian occultists it would have been very dangerous to allow the truth to be revealed in this way.
She set out to create this counterweight — we shall gradually understand it — by pursuing a definite course. She came nearer to the truth about the Eighth Sphere than Sinnett had done but she created the counterweight by giving vent in The Secret Doctrine to a volley of abuse on the subjects of Judaism and Christianity, interwoven with certain teaching about the nature of Jehovah. In this way, what she had put right on the one side she tried to balance out on the other, so that too much harm should not be done to the stream of Indian occultism. She knew that such truths do not remain theory or without effect as do other theories relating to the physical plane. Theories such as those of which we are speaking penetrate into the life of soul and colour the perceptions and feelings of men; indeed they were calculated to turn souls in a certain direction. — The whole affair is an inextricable jumble of fallacies.
H. P. Blavatsky did not, of course, know that the driving forces behind both tendencies were directed towards a special aim, namely, to foster this particular kind of error instead of the truth, to foster errors of a type that would be advantageous to the materialism of the nineteenth century — errors such as could be possible only at the high tide of materialism. — There you have one side of the situation.
On the other side, Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism and, in a certain respect, Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine too, had made a great impression, especially upon those who were really intent upon seeking the spiritual world. And that again naturally alarmed those who had cause to be alarmed at the possibility that an Occult Movement with such an oriental trend would appear.
Now a number of senseless polemics have been levelled against Blavatsky, against Sinnett, against the Theosophical Movement, and so forth. But among the different attacks made upon the Theosophical Movement in the course of time there have been some which emanated from well-informed but biased quarters. The tendency of Anglican spiritual life was that as little as possible of oriental teaching, as little as possible of any teaching concerning repeated Earth-lives, should be allowed to come to the knowledge of the public.
There is no doubt that among those who, from the standpoint that here lay a danger to Christianity in Europe, set themselves in opposition to the oriental teachings, were people who may be called “Christian esotericists”. Christian esotericists connected with the High Church party set themselves in opposition with this in mind. [note 5] And from that quarter came declarations calculated to stem the current of oriental thought proceeding from Blavatsky and Sinnett, but on the other hand to foster in the outside world esotericism of a kind calculated to conceal the teaching of repeated Earth-lives. To amalgamate a certain trend of thought with the form of Christianity customary in Europe — such was the aim of this group. It desired that the teaching of repeated Earth-lives — which it was essential to make known — should be left out of account. And a method similar to that used in the case of Sinnett was put into operation.
I must emphasise once again that those who made the corresponding preparations were probably not fully aware that they were tools of the individuality who stood behind them. Just as Sinnett knew nothing of the real tendency of those who stood behind him, neither did those who were connected with the High Church party know much of what lay behind the whole affair. But they realised that what they were doing could not fail to make a great impression upon the occultists and that determined them to lend force to the trend of those who were intent upon eliminating the teaching of repeated Earth-lives.
If after these preliminary indications we turn to consider the particular fallacy contained in Sinnett's book, we find that it is the teaching that the Eighth Sphere makes itself manifest paramountly in the Moon; that the Moon with its influences and effects upon man is, in fact, the Eighth Sphere. Expressed in this form, this is a fallacy. — Here is the essential point. If in investigating the influences of the Moon we were to start from Sinnett's assumption, we should be trapped in a grave error arising from materialistic thinking and not easily fathomed. — What, then, was necessary if the truth were to be fostered? It was necessary to point out the true state of things in regard to the Moon as opposed to the erroneous presentation in Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism.
Read Chapter IV dealing with this subject in the book Occult Science: an Outline. It was my purpose there to describe how the Moon left the Earth. I attached particular importance to the fact that the exit of the Moon should be described with the utmost clarity. It was essential to indicate the truth here as opposed to the fallacy. Thus in order to counter the Indian influence it was necessary to describe in all clarity the function of the Moon in the evolution of the Earth. That was one of the things that had to be done in my book Occult Science: an Outline.
The other thing that was necessary will be clear to you if you think of the people of whom I have just spoken, people who were also under a certain leadership and who did not wish the teaching of repeated Earth-lives to be spread among men as a truth because they considered that it would alter the form of Christianity customary in Europe and America. They went to work in a particular way, a way which we can clearly discern if we picture how these occultists set about refuting Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism. The occultists who were connected with the High Church party took upon themselves the task of refuting Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism and Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine.
In point of fact a great deal of good was done in regard to Sinnett's statement about the Eighth Sphere, for the falsity of the indications about the Eighth Sphere and the Moon was emphasised very poignantly from that side. But at the same time this was combined with another teaching. It was stated from that quarter that man is not connected with the Moon in the way described by Sinnett, but in a different way. True, this different way was not specifically described, but it could be perceived that these people had realised something about the process of the Moon's departure from the Earth as I have presented it in the book Occult Science. But now they laid great stress on the following. — They said: The Earth — and above all, man — was never connected with the other planets of the solar system ... therefore man could never have lived on Mercury, Venus, Mars or Jupiter. From that side, therefore, it was sharply emphasised that there is no connection between man and the other planets of the solar system. But this is the best way to instil yet another fallacy into the world, and to spread the greatest possible obscurity over the teaching of reincarnation. The other fallacy, Sinnett's fallacy, actually furthers the teaching of reincarnation in a sense, but in a materialistic form. The fallacy which consists in the assertion that during his Earth-evolution man has never had any connection with Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and so forth — this fallacy was not actually spread abroad by those who gave it publicity, but by those who stood behind them. It was they who worked upon the souls of men in such a way that these souls could never seriously believe in reincarnation. What, therefore, was strongly emphasised from this quarter was that man had never been connected with any planet other than the Earth nor had ever had anything to do with the other planets of the solar system.
-- The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century and Its Relation to Modern Culture, by Rudolf Steiner
Hardinge Britten wrote:
We have once more the pleasure of welcoming an article by our honoured contributor, Cpt. Pfoundes, long a resident in Japan and other Eastern lands: the present paper being a brief supplement to his former treatise on the TRUTHS of original Buddhism. Capt. Pfoundes (a member of several learned societies, whose chief object is the correction of error, as well as the diffusion of knowledge) is a high authority on the real primary teachings of Buddhism, and in this day, when all sorts of vague fantastic theories and spurious doctrines are being foisted on the public under the synonyn (sic) of "Buddhism," Capt. Pfoundes' timely papers cannot be too carefully studied, or thankfully accepted by the Editor and readers of The Two Worlds.
In the first part of the article, back in May, Pfoundes had sought to find commonalities between Buddhism and Spiritualism. In the second instalment he draws the two even closer, reinforcing the main Spiritualist objection to Theosophy by stating that in Buddhism
'(t)he doctrines of transmigration and re-incarnation, were some of the mistaken ideas that true enlightenment tended to dissipate.' (TTW July 26 1889, 447)
By August 1889, when the third part of the article appeared, the title had pointedly changed to 'BUDDHISM: WHAT IT IS NOT.' Here Pfoundes is explicit in his rejection of Theosophy, but also distances himself from Christianity 'or anything else' (which, since it is diplomatically unspecified, probably includes Spiritualism). He says:
BUDDHISM is not identical with the Esoteric Buddhism, of which so much has been said and written of late, much less is Theosophy of the day Buddhism pure and simple. It is Buddhism, and that alone, that we are now dealing with, and allusion is made to Christianity, or to anything else, no more than is absolutely necessary to the elucidation of the matter in hand. The writer is neither a Buddhist, nor a Theosophist;25 certainly not a follower of the individuals now most prominent in these movements; and it may be just as well to make it clear also that he is not a hostile critic to what is true and admirable in anything put forward under these, or any other, distinctive titles. The task will be essayed, however, to present the truth, if not exhaustively as to detail, certainly not mutilated or garbled, like so much that has been put forward on these subjects. (TTW 23 Aug 1889, 494)
In closing, Pfoundes sets out his stall as someone who has Buddhist truths to impart to those who are genuinely interested and eligible. This seems to be the point at which Pfoundes, realising that he possessed a knowledge of Buddhism exceeding that of the Theosophists, first decided to make a stand for Buddhism 'pure and simple‘, perhaps even making a dig at spiritualism by distinguishing between 'the trained spiritualist' and 'mere spiritist':
… "The great Master" gathered in his hand a few withered leaves, and asked his disciples: "Are these in my hand few, and those of the forest many?"
"True, oh great teacher; the leaves in the Bhagavat's hand are few, those of the forest are innumerable," answered they.
Then said the Tathagate (sic), "My words are but as the leaves in my hand. What you have yet to learn are as the leaves of the forest."
These gleanings are but the crude ore, and the rough pebbles, bright from the inexhaustible mines, are yet to be explored. In fitting hands, the pebbles become brilliant gems; the ore precious metal wherewith to make suitable settings.
To those who seek will come knowledge; to the worthy ENLIGHTENMENT. (TTW Aug 23 1889, vol 2 n.93, p495)
In less than twelve months, then, Pfoundes had moved from publishing in Theosophical magazines through endorsing Spiritualism and finally to criticising Theosophy and distancing himself from any other tradition than Buddhism 'pure and simple'. Yet Pfoundes knew that Buddhism as actually practised in Japan or anywhere else was by no means 'pure and simple'; he identified even in his TTW articles the malign influence of both 'a theocratic class' and excessive mystification of the teachings shading into 'superstition' (TTW Aug 23 1889, vol. 2, n.93, p494). Now, as a potential apostle of Buddhism 'pure and simple', Pfoundes had to decide, like every discerning missionary, what was core and what was peripheral to the Buddhism he would propagate to a new audience and, equally, how to lend authority to the core teachings.26
The Japanese roots of Buddhist globalisation
In the history of Meiji Buddhism, the years 1885-1899 are those of "Buddhist revival", in that many Buddhist societies, journals and schools appeared, most of which were trans-sectarian and anti-Christian in their character (Yoshinaga 2009). In effect, the common enemy, Christianity, forced Buddhists to unite without regard to sectarianism. The period from 1887-1893 was distinguished by the rise of "international communication", when Japanese Buddhists came into direct contact with European or American ―Buddhists‖ or Theosophists. Numerous Theosophical articles were published in Buddhist outlets and at least three ―white‖ Buddhists or sympathisers, Henry Steel Olcott (in 1889), Lafcadio Hearn (1890) and Pfoundes (1893), came to Japan. This "globalizing" tendency was related to one of the earliest modernizing movements, the Temperance organisation Hansei kai. Hansei kai was established in Futsū Kyōkō ('Normal School'), the Western-style middle school opened by the Nishi Honganji True Pure Land sect in 1885. The Kaigai Senkyō Kai was born of this modernizing and globalizing element within Japanese Buddhism. In March 1887, Matsuyama Matsutarō, a teacher of English at the Futsū Kyōkō, and two others wrote a letter of inquiry to the Aryan Theosophical Society, USA, to ascertain the truth of a Russian newspaper article report that "Buddhism has lately been introduced into New York and Brooklyn, and its followers are increasingly in number very rapidly"27. In response to this inquiry, the Theosophist William Q. Judge wrote as follows:
"I am a Buddhist but am not of a particular sect. I was made a Buddhist by Col. H.S. Olcott, in India, under the authority of the High Priest of Ceylon, and I try in every way to spread Buddhism… The account you read in the newspaper was in part true. There is no temple in this country. But there are many Buddhists. They do not properly understand it however, because there are no teachers, and many wicked lies are told against Buddhism by Missionaries and other people. The people need that religion because their own has not succeeded in making them honest or kind to each other. They are always fighting and going to law with each other although Jesus their prophet told them not to do so, but to love one another, and although they are not very happy, because the illusions of life make them slaves of the senses. So do tell your young men not to desert the law of Buddha for this religion but to try to spread Buddhism again over the face of the world."28
Through the network of the Theosophical Society, Matsuyama‘s letter evoked responses from America, Europe, Australia, and India. The number of letters from abroad reaching Matsuyama was large enough to encourage him and some of the staff of his school to organize a new group called Ōbei Tsūshin Kai (Society for Corresponding with Americans and Europeans ) to deal with those letters, many of which asked for some guidance on Buddhism. Matsuyama contributed a series of articles from the first issue onwards of the group‘s magazine Hansei Kai Zasshi. The Ōbei Tsūshin Kai seems to have been run on its members‘ own money. On Aug 11, 1888, they enlarged their small group into the Kaigai Senkyō Kai. Though its founding members - Matsuyama Matsutaro, Dōtsu Kojiro (editor-in-chief), Hino Gien (secretary) and others - were all from Futsū Kyoko, it proclaimed itself to be a nonsectarian organization. Its aim was "to propagate Japanese Buddhism abroad"29, not just the teachings of the Jodo Shin sect. Akamatsu Renjō, a high priest of Nishi Honganji, was the society‘s first president but his role seems to have been little more than nominal as he did not contribute an article to their organ, Kaigai Bukkyo Jijo which reported on the state of Buddhism overseas.
The first issue of the association‘s English/French language magazine The Bijou of Asia was distributed in 1888 to 270 locations in America, Britain, India, Siam30 and France31. The parallel Japanese-language journal, Kaigai Bukkyo Jijo, had started in December 1888, its first issue reprinted at least three times. The early issues of Kaigai Bukkyo Jijo contained articles and letters by Buddhists and sympathisers in America, Europe, Australia and Southern Asia such as Philangi Dasa (Carl Herman Vetterling), Francesca Arundale, Charles Johnston, Laura C. Holloway, Josephine W. Cables, Elliot B. Page, Edward Wolleb, Alexander Russell Webb, Dharmapala, and so on. Over the life of the journal Philangi Dasa was the most prolific contributor; second was Charles Pfoundes.
The founders of the Kaigai Senkyo Kai were inexperienced in missionary work. "As to the propagation of our faith, we think, it would be best for us to make our friends in Europe and America, and this could be performed by correspondence and the publication of tracts and books regarding our religion"32. Sometime in the summer of 1889, Matsuyama and his colleagues received an interesting proposal from Pfoundes in London and a sample of his articles on Buddhism. The Kaigai Senkyo Kai, it seemed, had a Japanese-speaking British missionary ready and willing to set to work propagating Buddhism in London.