19/09/2025
Translation of an article that provides the Czech scholar of religion Otakar Pertold’s response to the increasing popularity of Buddhism in Europe in the second half of the 19th century. This popularity led many Europeans to leave their countries and take refuge in the Three Gems in Buddhist monasteries across Asia, most commonly in contemporary Sri Lanka and Myanmar. Pertold bases his radical “no” to the question in the title on two grounds explained in the translated text.
In the last thirty years of the past century, when the study of Indian languages was spreading in Europe, broad audiences were interested in Indian religions, most notably in Buddhism [fn. 1], which was previously known in Europe in its Chinese and Japanese forms, and which appeared in Indian litera...
