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Translating Christianity and Buddhism: Catholic Missionaries in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Burma

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2017

Andrew J. Finch
Andrew J. Finch*
Affiliation:
Ambleside
*
*6 Gale Rigg House, Ambleside, Cumbria, LA22 0BA. E-mail: [email protected].
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Abstract

Catholic mission in Burma during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries provides evidence for the importance of translation as an element of both Christian evangelism and apologetic. In Burma missionaries were faced by a varied linguistic environment, which became more complex over time. An effective mission required Burmese and the two Karen dialects. Additionally, missionaries were pastors to existing Portuguese Christian communities. British expansion during the nineteenth century added English and Tamil to these pastoral languages. English also became a language of education, Christian debate and mediation. Those wishing to understand Buddhism through its canonical texts had to acquire, or borrow from Buddhist monks, expertise in Pali. This translation and interpretation of Buddhist texts became a tool for both evangelization and Christian defence. In this latter role, the manner in which Buddhist terms were translated or employed became significant within wider European debates concerning the relationship of Christianity to Buddhism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 53: TRANSLATING CHRISTIANITY , June 2017 , pp. 324 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2017 

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Footnotes

The assistance of the Scouloudi Foundation in providing a Historical Award to undertake the initial research for this article is gratefully acknowledged.

References

1 Andaya, Barbara Watson and Andaya, Leonard Y., A History of Early Modern Southeast Asia, 1400–1830 (Cambridge, 2015), 57–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 145–7. The title Theravāda was adopted only in 1950 by those groups previously identified as part of southern Buddhism: Crosby, Kate, Theravada Buddhism: Continuity, Diversity, and Identity (Chichester, 2014), 1–2Google Scholar, 4.

2 Andaya and Andaya, History, 216; Bigandet, Paul A., An Outline of the History of the Burmese Catholic Mission from the Year 1720 to 1887 (Bangkok, 1996Google Scholar; first publ. 1887), 7–8, 10–11.

3 Bigandet, Outline, 12–13; Sangermano, Vincentius, The Burmese Empire a Hundred Years ago as described by Father Sangermano, with an Introduction and Notes by John Jardine, 3rd edn (London, 1893), 283Google Scholar. In May 1816 a ‘Portuguese’ priest was called to treat the infant son of the American Baptist missionaries Ann and Adoniram Judson at Rangoon: Knowles, James D., Memoir of Mrs Ann H. Judson, Wife of the Rev. Adoniram Judson, Missionary to Burmah: Including a History of the American Baptist Mission in the Burman Empire (Marston Gate, 2012Google Scholar; first publ. 1829), 123.

4 Sangermano, History, xxv.

5 Ibid. 27–44.

6 Dallet, Charles, Histoire de l’église de Corée, précédée d'une introduction sur l'histoire, les institutions, la langue, les moeurs et coutumes coréennes, 2 vols (Seoul, 1975; first publ. 1874)Google Scholar, cxliv–cxlvi.

7 Bigandet, Outline.

8 Bigandet, Paul A., The Life or Legend of Gaudama, the Budha of the Burmese, with Annotations, Notice on the Phongies, or Budhist Religious and the Ways to Niban (Rangoon, 1858), vi–viiGoogle Scholar. He believed that ‘error is never to be combated by another error or a false supposition’: ibid. 171 n. 90. Bigandet is identified as being among those ‘amateur’ Orientalists who made commentaries and translations into proper objects for study: Hallisey, Charles, ‘Roads Taken and Not Taken in the Study of Theravāda Buddhism’, in Lopez, Donald S., ed., Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism under Colonialism (Chicago, IL, and London, 1995), 31–61Google Scholar, at 44.

9 Bigandet, Life, vii.

10 Bigandet, Outline, 12, 27.

11 Ibid. 14.

12 Sangermano, History, 285–6.

13 Bigandet, Outline, 38, 48, 55, 58–60, 90–1, 93, 105. The presence of Christian Armenian merchants and priests, among whom the Barnabites sought converts to Catholicism during the eighteenth century, and Chinese Christians in Myaung-mya in the 1880s, added to this linguistic mix: ibid. 17, 141; Sangermano, History, 116.

14 Bigandet, Outline, 26. Knowledge of Pali had also acquired a wider significance beyond that of a sacred language. Although not referred to by the Catholic missionaries, its importance as a religious language and as a marker of progress through the hierarchy of the Sangha ensured that knowledge of Pali had acquired an intellectual cachet. As Ann Judson wrote in the 1820s: ‘[Pali] is the learned language of the Burmans, and without a knowledge of which, a man is not considered learned’: Knowles, Memoir, 117.

15 Bigandet, Outline, 30, 33.

16 Ibid. 34, 42, 48, 52, 67, 98, 100, 112–13.

17 Ibid. 34.

18 Ibid. 40. In addition to his English publications, Bigandet was involved in treaty negotiations at Mandalay in 1862 between the British and the Burmese, and in 1866 acted as an interpreter between British envoys and the Burmese Court: ibid. 62; ‘Paul Bigandet (1813–1894)’, Archives des Missions Étrangères de Paris, online at: <http://archives.mepasie.org/notices/notices-biographiques/bigandet>, accessed 27 October 2014.

19 Bigandet, Outline, 89, 115.

20 Ibid. 132.

21 Sangermano, History, xxv.

22 Bigandet, Outline, 17; Sangermano, History, 283–4.

23 Bigandet, Outline, 21–2; Crosby, Theravada Buddhism, 288. The Barnabites also composed a life of Christ in verse: Bigandet, Outline, 100.

24 Ibid. 21–2.

25 Ibid. 42, 99; Barnabite Fathers USA, ‘Missions in Burma 1722–1832’, online at: <http://www.barnabites.com/missions-in-burma>, accessed 7 July 2015.

26 Griffini, D. M., Della vita di Monsignor Gio. Maria Percoto, 3 vols (Udine, 1781)Google Scholar. Bigandet provided the second editor of Sangermano's history with a copy of the vita, and he appended a summary to the edition: Sangermano, History, 102, 282–7.

27 An unnamed Barnabite composed ‘Dialogues between a Primitive Native and a former Theravadin Monk from Siam’, but it is unclear whether this text survives. It may have been the ‘book of religious controversy between a Christian and a Budhist [sic]’ referred to by Bigandet, which had been composed by a Catholic priest at Ava in the eighteenth century: Bigandet, Life, 188 n. 97; Barnabite Fathers USA, ‘Missions in Burma 1722–1832’.

28 Harris, Elizabeth J., Theravāda Buddhism and the British Encounter: Religious, Missionary and Colonial Experience in Nineteenth-Century Sri Lanka (London and New York, 2006), 17–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Sangermano described the author as ‘a Zaradò or master of the Emperor’: History, xxxviii.

29 Sangermano, History, 102, 109.

30 Ibid. xxxix. The Vinaya Piṭaka and Sutta Piṭaka contain, respectively, the rules governing the Sangha, and the teachings of the Buddha embedded in narratives about his life and former lives or in poetry. Sangermano erroneously names the Pāṭimokka as the second ‘basket’ of the Tipiṭaka; this is in fact the Abidhamma Piṭaka, an analysis of metaphysics and causality. In the English editions, the Italian phonetic spellings of Burmese and other names were retained: History, xxxix.

31 Ubà taught Pali to two of Sangermano's scholars: ibid. xxxix.

32 Ibid. 124.

33 Ibid. 110, 113–16.

34 ‘Paul Bigandet (1813–1894)’.

35 ‘Principaux points du système boudhiste’, Annales de philosophie chrétienne, 3rd ser. 8 (1843), 85–94, 260–79; Hallisey, ‘Roads Taken’, 40.

36 Hallisey, ‘Roads Taken’, 40, 57 n. 49.

37 Bigandet, Paul, Vie ou légende de Gaudama le boudha des Birmans et notice sur les phongyies ou moines birmans, transl. Gauvain, Victor (Paris, 1878)Google Scholar.

38 Bigandet, Life, 4 n. 3, 289, 290–1.

39 Ibid. 3 n. 1, 194 n. 100, 201 n. 101; Bigandet, ‘Principaux points’, 94, 262, 263, 277–9.

40 Stone, Jon R., ed., The Essential Max Müller: On Language, Mythology, and Religion (Basingstoke, 2002), 81–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Sangermano, History, 32.

42 Harris, British Encounter, 55–6.

43 It has not been possible to consult Sangermano's original Italian manuscript.

44 Bigandet, Life, 2 n. 1.

45 Crosby, Theravada Buddhism, 33; Sangermano, History, 23, 102, 110.

46 Bigandet, ‘Principaux points’, 86, 90, 272–3.

47 Bigandet, Life, 5 n. 4, 21 n. 28, 101 n. 70 (twice), 146 n. 84, 196 n. 100.

48 Bigandet, ‘Principaux points’, 86, 89–90.

49 Ibid. 85.

50 Ibid. 265; Bigandet, Life, 53 n. 49, 182.

51 Ibid. 2 n.1, 9 n. 12, 63 n. 55, 101, 227. But in his article, he used Phra as equivalent to Buddha and Phralaong to represent the bodhisatta state: Bigandet, ‘Principaux points’, 89.

52 Bigandet, Life, 2 n. 1, 286–7.

53 Hallisey, ‘Roads Taken’, 40.

54 Bigandet, Life, vii, 285. Max Müller names Bigandet when discussing the habit among missionaries of emphasizing the ‘elevated, pure and humanizing character’ of Buddhism, only then to bring it low: Stone, Essential, 81–2.

55 Bigandet, Life, 2 n. 1, 176 n. 93, 285–6, 312. Sangermano similarly relied on the classical texts rather than ‘the tales and reports of the common people’: History, xxxix.

56 Harris, British Encounter, 28, 51, 104–5. Protestant writers often had their own particular model in mind, in which comparisons of Buddhism to Protestant and Catholic Christianity were ‘from the perspective of a protestant representation of Catholicism as a degenerate form of Christianity’: Hallisey, ‘Roads Taken’, 46. The American Baptist James Knowles described Buddhism as a religion in which ‘[t]he sacred books are sealed from the eyes of all but the learned and the priesthood, by the secrecy of a learned language; and little is known of the established religion, except in popular fables, and external rites’: Knowles, Memoir, 316. The description could equally be of Catholicism.

57 Bigandet, ‘Principaux points’, 86; Bigandet, Life, 245–6; Clarke, John J., Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter between Asian and Western Thought (London and New York, 1997), 81Google Scholar; Sangermano, History, 280–1.