NUMISMATICS HELPED WESTERN STUDY OF BUDDHISM Public Deposited
The E-Sylum: Volume 7, Number 15, April 11, 2004, Article 19
NUMISMATICS HELPED WESTERN STUDY OF BUDDHISM
A book review in The Japan Times notes the role of
numismatics in the west's discovery of the origins of
Buddhism. The book in question is "Buddha and the Sahibs:
The Men Who Discovered India's Lost Religion" by Charles
Allen. John Murray, 2003, 322 pp., £8.99 (paper)."The story begins with a botanist. At the end of the 18th
century, a Scottish doctor named Francis Buchanan was
employed to carry out surveys of Burma and Nepal, neither
of them with ease, the latter with great difficulty, while on
missions to those countries. While he was engaged on this,
he obtained glimpses of a new religion.It was a new religion to the British, employees of the Honorable
East India Company (EICo), but an old one to the subcontinent
where it had been born. Its fate was curious: Like Christianity,
this faith had faded from its land of origin, but been taken up with
enthusiasm in surrounding countries, and extended its influence,
in varying forms, over most of a continent. It was now about to
be rediscovered."Discovered," in this context, means by Europeans and the
Western world.""Some of the unsolved mysteries were contained in inscriptions
that nobody could read. A talented young Englishman named
James Prinsep, who contributed much to the welfare of ordinary
Indians and was adept at acquiring languages, managed to break
the code on one important column. This had wider consequences
than at first appeared. "Prinsep's unlocking of the Delhi No. 1
script . . . remains unquestionably the greatest single advance
in the recovery of India's lost past," says the author.Numismatics also formed a part of the Prinsep's investigation,
and Allen explains in detail some of mysteries that he unraveled.
When he died, still a young man but exhausted by his work, the
native people, independently of the British, "raised a subscription
of their own to build a ghat in his memory." Prinsep's Ghat still
exists, on the banks of the Ganges in Benares, though it is now
"popularly known as Princes Ghat.""Because of these remarkable men's work, "by the end of 1836
the Indian origins of Buddhism had been established beyond
doubt."To read the full article, see: Buddhism Origin Article
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