Hinduism & Buddhism – Charles Eliot (1921) (1st ed)

S$350.00

Hinduism & Buddhism – Charles Eliot (1921) (1st ed)

S$350.00

Title: Hinduism and Buddhism: An Historical Sketch

Author: Charles Eliot

Publisher: Edward Arnold, 1921. First edition.

Condition: Hardcover, cloth. Complete in 3 vols. Good. Rough cut pages and slight foxing, especially to edges, and very slight fraying to edges. No other defects. A very heavy set, overseas shipping will cost extra.

Eliot’s complete 3-volume set, one of the most extensive historical surveys of Hinduism & Buddhism ever published as a single book.

Contents include:

Vol 1:

Influence of Indian Thought in Eastern Asia
Origin and Growth of Hinduism
The Buddha
Asoka
New Forms of Buddhism
Revival of Hinduism
European Influence and Modern Hinduism
Buddhist/Hindu doctrines (comprising many chapters)
Early Indian Religion
Pali Buddhism…and many more

Vol 2:

The Mahayana
Hinduism

Vol 3:

Buddhism Outside India (Ceylon, Burma, Java and the Malay Archipelago, China, Tibet, Japan, Korea, etc)
Mutual Influence of Eastern and Western Religions

About the author (from Wikipedia):

Sir Charles Norton Edgcumbe Eliot GCMG CB PC (8 January 1862 – 16 March 1931) was a British diplomat, colonial administrator and botanist. He served as Commissioner of British East Africa in 1900–1904. He was British Ambassador to Japan in 1919–1925.

He was also known as a malacologist and marine biologist. He described the sea slug species Chelidonura varians Eliot, 1903.

Eliot was born in the village of Sibford Gower near Banbury, Oxfordshire, England and educated at Cheltenham College and Balliol College, Oxford, where he took a double first in classical moderations and Greats, as well as winning the Craven, Ireland and Hertford scholarships. Remarkably, he also won the Boden Sanskrit Scholarship and the Houghton Syriac prize. He was a noteworthy linguist, with a full knowledge of 16 languages and conversant in 20 more.

Eliot served in diplomatic posts in Russia (1885), Morocco (1892), Turkey (1893), and Washington, D.C. (1899). He also served as British Commissioner in Samoa. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the 1898 Birthday Honours and was knighted as a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in the New Year honours list 1 January 1900.

He was the British Ambassador to Japan in 1920–1926: though the position was not renewed, he stayed in Japan, studying the practice of Buddhism there. He regretted the 1921 decision to end the Anglo-Japanese alliance in 1923.

Taken ill with influenza, he decided to return to England, but died on the journey on 16 March 1931 and was buried at sea in the Straits of Malacca.