Early Encounters With Buddhism

Some medieval European travelogue authors offer first insights into a foreign religion. Explorations of an unchartered territory

Albrecht Classen

University of Arizona

pp. 7-24

in: Laura Langone & Alexandra Ilieva (eds), Dynamic Encounters Between Buddhism and the West, East Asian Journal of Philosophy 3 (1), 2024.

Abstract

Knowledge of Buddhism seems to have reached Europe not until the eighteenth century or later. Medieval Christians were, after all, primarily concerned with the conflicts butting themselves against the Jews and Muslims. Leaving mostly aside the comments by the armchair traveler John Mandeville, this paper will focus, instead, on three significant authors who based their accounts on extensive personal experiences, probably also with Buddhism, whether they understood the foreign religion or not, Marco Polo’s Travels, the insightful comments by an anonymous who left behind the Niederrheinische Orientbericht and the work published by Odorico da Pordenone.