The Buddha

The Buddha is one of Paul Carus’s many books on Buddhism, written for a general American readership in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Carus was a German born American philosopher and prolific author, best remembered as the long time editor of the Open Court Publishing Company and of the journals The Open Court and The Monist. He was one of the most important early American interpreters of Asian religion and philosophy for Western readers, and his many books on Buddhism, Taoism, and comparative religion played a significant role in shaping how educated Americans first encountered these traditions.

The Buddha is most likely a biographical and doctrinal introduction to the historical Siddhartha Gautama and to the teaching that grew out of his life. Carus had previously published The Gospel of Buddha in 1894, his more famous attempt to compile the major teachings of the Buddha in a format that would be accessible to Western readers used to the gospel form of Christian scripture. The Buddha as a separate volume might be a shorter introduction, a children’s version, or a related work that takes a different approach to similar material. Carus produced many short books on various aspects of Buddhism across his career, with each entry aimed at a slightly different readership.

What distinguishes Carus’s approach from a lot of contemporary writing on Buddhism is the seriousness of his philosophical engagement. He was not himself a Buddhist but he had a serious philosophical interest in the religion and corresponded with leading Buddhist figures of his era, including Soyen Shaku and D.T. Suzuki. His books were aimed at presenting Buddhism to Western readers on its own intellectual terms rather than dismissing it as primitive or as fundamentally inferior to Christianity, which was the more common Western treatment of Asian religion in the period.

Carus’s books on Asian religion are now historical artifacts more than living introductions to Buddhism. Modern Buddhist studies has moved well past the framings he was working with and many of his interpretations have been substantially revised. But for readers interested in the history of how Western Buddhism developed, in the prehistory of the modern engagement with Asian thought, or in the wider intellectual culture of late nineteenth century America, Carus’s work remains worth knowing.

The text is now part of the historical record of how the West came to understand the central figure of one of the world’s major religions.