Today, when we survey the state of Buddhadhamma around the world we see a well-established network of organizations — publishing houses, meditation centers and healthy monastic communities supported by traditional laity. One may think that this situation has prevailed historically, but this is not the case.
When Western travellers and traders first visited Asia at the beginning of the Colonial Era, the Buddha’s Teaching had fallen on hard times indeed. In India, its country of origin, the Dhamma had been completely lost; except for some isolated communities, all knowledge of Buddha had been forgotten. The cities and monuments of past glorious nations devoted to the Buddha lay in ruins, buried for centuries.
In the surrounding countries Dhamma had survived in a variety of forms, some of which were quite different from the pristine primitive practice that spread through India in the first few centuries. Fortunately, over the centuries Burma and Ceylon had retained the words of Buddha in the Pāli Canon; and in Burma, as well, the original practice of Vipassana was kept intact. We owe a great debt of gratitude to the Buddhasangha of these countries for their diligence.
But we also owe a debt to the explorers, soldiers, civil servants and scientists of the East India Company and those of all the competing colonial nations for their part in the re-discovery in India and the resurgence in Southeast Asia of the Buddha, his Life and his Teaching. It is these people whom we will present to you on this website. Their studies and archaeological digs have brought to the West the full story of Buddhism’s rise and fall; and now as the Dhamma once more emerges to enlighten the world, their writings, presented here, will trace how we in the West came to know of India’s greatest son.