Mahayana in Europe: Japanese Buddhists and Their Contribution to Academic Knowledge about Buddhism in Nineteenth-Century Europe

在19世纪末，日本佛教徒在欧洲佛教和宗教知识的生产中扮演了什么角色？目前的项目旨在回答这个问题，从而有助于研究佛教在欧洲的接受情况。尽管这种接受的重要方面(如印度学研究、欧洲哲学中的佛教，或者最近的神智学)一直是研究的主题，但日本佛教徒的贡献完全从画面中消失了。然而，自19世纪70年代以来，通过与欧洲东方主义者接触的日本人直接传递关于大乘佛教的知识，对欧洲人对佛教的看法的影响超过了迄今所承认的。在三个子项目中，我计划调查1)从19世纪70年代起现代佛教观是如何在日本出现的，2)这种观点是如何由日本佛教徒在欧洲传播的，以及3)这种关于大乘佛教的知识如何不仅改变了欧洲的佛教形象，而且最终改变了整个欧洲学术界的宗教观念。更详细地说，只有通过现代性条件下日本佛教的内部改革，才出现了接触欧洲的冲动(子项目1)。实际的调解人，即日本佛教僧侣，作为那里的东方主义学者的学生去了欧洲。然而，与此同时，他们被认为是其生活宗教的真正专家，他们本身也是土著知识传统的学者(分项目2)。尽管大乘佛教的一些来源甚至在19世纪中叶之前就被翻译成了欧洲语言，但在19世纪60年代之前，人们几乎没有意识到佛教在欧洲的不同传承。日本的调解人在“大乘佛教”这一明确的概念(子项目3)的出现中起到了关键作用。整个项目的中心假设是，关于佛教的知识是在新的宗教研究学科的初始阶段产生的，但这一过程不仅仅是由于欧洲的考据研究。佛教在这一初始阶段很重要，因为它对“世界宗教”概念的形成起着至关重要的作用。我们在这里看到了亚洲和欧洲之间学术知识生产的动态图景，亚洲方面也有积极的调解人，这一图景让人对欧洲东方主义的既定概念产生了严重怀疑。

What part did Japanese Buddhists play in the production of knowledge about Buddhism and religion in Europe towards the end of the nineteenth century? The current project aims at answering this question, thereby contributing to research on the reception of Buddhism in Europe. Although important aspects of this reception (such as Indological research, Buddhism in European philosophy, or more recently Theosophy) have been the subject of research, the contribution made by Japanese Buddhists is missing completely from the picture. Yet the direct transfer of knowledge about Mahayana Buddhism through Japanese who were in contact with European orientalists since the 1870s has influenced European views of Buddhism more than has been acknowledged so far.In three subprojects I plan to investigate 1) how a modern view of Buddhism emerged in Japan from the 1870s onwards, 2) how this view was spread in Europe by Japanese Buddhists, and 3) how this knowledge about Mahayana Buddhism changed not only the European image of Buddhism, but eventually conceptions of religion in the European academy overall. To elaborate, it was only through the inner reform of Japanese Buddhism under the conditions of modernity that the impulse to reach out to Europe emerged (subproject 1). The actual mediators, i.e. Japanese Buddhist priests, went to Europe as pupils of orientalist scholars there. At the same time, however, they were regarded as authentic experts of their lived religion and they were also scholars of their indigenous traditions of knowledge in their own right (subproject 2). Although some sources of Mahayana Buddhism had been translated into European languages even before the middle of the nineteenth century, there was little consciousness of the differing subtraditions of Buddhism in Europe before the 1860s. The Japanese mediators were a crucial actor in the emergence of a clear-cut concept of "Mahayana Buddhism" (subproject 3).The central hypothesis of the overall project is that knowledge about Buddhism was created in the initial phase of the new discipline of religious studies, but that this process was not just due to European textual studies. Buddhism was important in this initial phase because it was crucial in forming conceptions of "world religions". And we see here a dynamic picture of the production of academic knowledge between Asia and Europe with active mediators also on the Asian side, a picture that throws serious doubt on established notions of European orientalism.