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In: Buddhism·Hinduism·History - Other
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #16546.
The work is a scholarly survey of the development of Hindu and Buddhist traditions, written by Sir Charles Eliot and published in three volumes in the early twentieth‑century. Volume II, whose opening pages are reproduced above, begins with a detailed note on the author’s method of transliterating Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan and Chinese terms into Latin script, explaining the choice of various scholarly systems and the inevitable inconsistencies that result from using different sources. After this technical preface the reader is led into a systematic outline of the book’s contents, which include extensive chapters on the Mahāyāna movement, its doctrines, scriptures, key figures and historical spread, as well as a parallel treatment of Hindu sects, rituals, philosophy and later syncretic developments. The introductory passage makes clear that the text is organized as a reference work, with abundant footnotes, abbreviations and a bibliography drawn from contemporary Oriental scholarship.
Eliot’s voice is that of a learned Victorian‑era orientalist, combining meticulous citation with a conversational tone that occasionally acknowledges the limits of his knowledge. The prose is dense but clear, employing the academic conventions of the 1920s, formal sentence structure, extensive use of foreign terms, and a measured, sometimes self‑deprecating, commentary on the state of research. Readers who enjoy rigorous historical analysis, the comparative study of Asian religions, or the early‑modern scholarly approach to Sanskrit and Buddhist texts will find this volume rewarding. It especially appeals to students of religious history, classicists, and anyone interested in the intellectual backdrop against which contemporary understandings of Hinduism and Buddhism were formed.
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Excerpts from the Preface to the book from Volume 1, regarding the method of transcription used.
"In the following pages I have occasion to transcribe words belonging to many oriental languages in Latin characters. Unfortunately a uniform system of transcription, applicable to all tongues, seems not to be practical at present. It was attempted in the Sacred Books of the East, but that system has fallen into disuse and is liable to be misunderstood. It therefore seems best to use for each language the method of transcription adopted by standard works in English dealing with each, for French and German transcriptions, whatever their merits may be as representations of the original sounds, are often misleading to English readers, especially in Chinese. For Chinese I have adopted Wade's system as used in Giles's Dictionary, for Tibetan the system of Sarat Chandra Das, for Pali that of the Pali Text Society and for Sanskrit that of Monier-Williams's Sanskrit Dictionary, except that I write s instead of s. Indian languages however offer many difficulties: it is often hard to decide whether Sanskrit or vernacular forms are more suitable and in dealing with Buddhist subjects whether Sanskrit or Pali words should be used. I have found it convenient to vary the form of proper names according as my remarks are based on Sanskrit or on Pali literature, but this obliges me to write the same word differently in different places, e.g. sometimes Ajâtasatru and sometimes Ajâtasattu, just as in a book dealing with Greek and Latin mythology one might employ both Herakles and Hercules. Also many Indian names such as Ramayana, Krishna, nirvana have become Europeanized or at least are familiar to all Europeans interested in Indian literature. It seems pedantic to write them with their full and accurate complement of accents and dots and my general practice is to give such words in their accurate spelling (Râmâyana, etc.) when they are first mentioned and also in the notes but usually to print them in their simpler and unaccented forms. I fear however that my practice in this matter is not entirely consistent since different parts of the book were written at different times."
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