Buddhism and Modernity

The academic research of the Catholic priest Du Erwei generated strong responses from Buddhists. Du claimed that Buddhism was descended from earlier lunar religion—and thus, implicitly, that it embodied a “primitive” stage of religious thought. As an anthropologist and scholar affiliated with National Taiwan University, Du drew from voluminous academic sources, meaning that his theory demanded a rigorous Buddhist response. This chapter discusses Yinshun’s writings from the period, which aimed at showing how fundamental Buddhist beliefs transcended history and that Christianity itself was, as Du Erwei had claimed about Buddhism, historically-derived. Modern historiographical forms thus increasingly paralleled the appeal to values, showing their importance for identity formation and as a standard for religious “truth”.