Eleven years of works on Buddhism in Europe (May 1936-May 1947)

The introductory survey “Eleven years of works on Buddhism in Europe” reviews the state of Buddhist studies across Europe from May 1936 to May 1947, a tumultuous decade that spanned the Second World War. Scholars grouped religions into categories such as monotheism, polytheism and animism, yet the article notes that early Buddhist writers often rejected simplistic comparisons with Vedic or Brahmanic systems and instead stressed the uniqueness of the Buddha’s teaching. It surveys the contributions of prominent European scholars who examined Buddhist cosmology, psychology, iconography and history. For example, J. Przyluski’s essays interrogated how animism and polytheism shaped early Buddhist conceptions of gods and the pantheon, while Stcherbatsky’s studies of the skandha theory explored whether early Buddhism allowed for a concept of soul.  Lamotte’s research traced developments from the Brahma‑vihāras and the analysis of time and causation to the emerging Mahāyāna concepts of the Dharma body. Detailed bibliographical notes record important publications produced in Europe during the decade. Many were philological works: critical editions of Pāli suttas, grammars of Tibetan and Khotanese, and dictionaries such as W. E. Soothill and L. Hodus’s dictionary of Buddhist terms. Others were historical and archaeological studies, for instance Marcel Lalou’s catalogues of Tibetan and Sanskrit manuscripts. The article mentions translations of the Vinaya, the Mahāvastu, and other canonical texts, and points out that the Pāli Text Society reissued long‑exhausted volumes of the Dīgha‑Nikāya and continued work on the Pāli–English dictionary. During this period scholars also researched the relationships between Indian and Central Asian Buddhism, studying inscriptions and coins to reconstruct the spread of Buddhism to regions such as Afghanistan and Mongolia. Overall, the survey presents European Buddhist scholarship as broad but uneven. The war disrupted many projects, yet major editions, translations and commentaries appeared despite shortages of resources. The author encourages a more integrated approach that balances philology with philosophical and historical analysis and that pays greater attention to Indian sources and commentaries rather than relying solely on Western secondary interpretations.

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