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Journal of the American Academy of Religion 2004 72(4):897-933; doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfh083
© 2004 by American Academy of Religion
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Modernity and the Early Discourse of Scientific Buddhism

David L. McMahan

Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA 17604-3003

The interpretation of Buddhism as consonant with science has been an essential factor in the transmission of Buddhism to the West, as well as in the success of certain reform movements in Asia. Both westerners and Asians developed the discourse of scientific Buddhism in response to different but interrelated crises in their various cultural contexts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Anagarika Dharmapala's contribution to this discourse arose out of a crisis of legitimacy in Sinhalese Buddhism that stemmed from colonialism, missionization, western hegemony, and western representations of Asians and Buddhism common to this period. Two Americans, Paul Carus and Henry Steel Olcott, attempted to establish the scientificity of Buddhism in response to the Victorian crisis of faith. This discourse represented Buddhism as an inverse reflection of what skeptics and liberal Christians believed to be problematic about orthodox interpretations of Christianity in light of scientific developments and biblical criticism.


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