Between Awakening and Enlightenment

the first modern Asian Buddhist and the first Buddhist Englishman

Iain Sinclair

University of Queensland

pp. 47-73

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

Abstract

The last form of Buddhism surviving on the Indian subcontinent was revealed to the West for the first time through a collaboration between Paṇḍita Amṛtānanda (1774–1835), a Newar Buddhist native of the Kathmandu Valley, and Brian Houghton Hodgson (1801–1894), the East India Company’s envoy in Kathmandu. The groundbreaking account of Buddhism that Hodgson published, with Amṛtānanda’s guidance, drew on traditional learning and texts preserved only in the Himalayas. However, it also included formulations of doctrine that were fundamentally new. Both hoped, for different reasons, that Buddhism might engage the hearts and minds of the nascent West. Nonetheless, Hodgson’s work was soon put aside by textualists more interested in classical sources, and Amṛtānanda’s innovative writings have remained overlooked in studies of Buddhism and modernity. This article reassesses the first attempt to bring the ancient religiosity of awakening into the rational discourse of the Enlightenment.