About the lecture series

These three lectures will look at the various ways in which British people have come to know about Chinese Buddhism.  The first concerns a medieval encounter between a Chinese religious figure and a Frenchman that probably became known to at least one contemporary scholar in England.  But we must not assume that this encounter was related to Buddhism itself: the actual background is very complicated, showing the richness of Chinese religious culture with which outsiders had to make themselves familiar.  The second lecture will look at the academic study of Chinese Buddhism in the United Kingdom, showing how in its origins it had strong links with British rule in India. The third lecture will show how outside the universities various other persons in Britain and beyond selected a work in Chinese that seemed most profound to them and tried  to circulate its thought through a number of publications largely forgotten today, though some archives relating to its translation still exist.