300 CHAPTER TWELVEbody of data available to the growing science of humanity so that a more com-
prehensive view of the varieties of human experience could place the science
on a more solid basis. Initially, in their view, Buddhism formed only a few
scattered pieces of the larger puzzle of Asian culture they were trying to com-
prehend, and they often confused Buddhism with other traditions. Not until
1844 did the French philologist Eugene Burnouf put the pieces together to
show that certain religions discovered in China, Tibet, India, Sri Lanka, and
Southeast Asia were in fact branches of a single tradition that had had its home
in India. Burnouf thus lay the foundation for Buddhology, the scholarly study
of Buddhism, that has since spread throughout the west, including Russia, en-
gaging scholars in the fields of philology, comparative religion, history, sociol-
ogy, psychology, philosophy, and anthropology. The growth ofBuddhology
reached the point that in 1965 the University ofWisconsin established the
first graduate program in Buddhist Studies, and other universities soon fol-
lowed. Buddhology has also become fashionable in the East, with Japan and
Sri Lanka currently providing some of the most prolific members of the field.
In the latter part of the twentieth century, Buddhology-like many other
academic disciplines-became something of an end in itself, with little
thought for its role in the society at large. However, the twin impulses that
originally led to this professional activity-political and social-scientific-are
still active to some extent. Buddhologists have been called upon to help West-
ern governments with foreign-policy decisions and to train diplomats going
to Asia. Buddhist teachings have also played a role in shaping the science of
humanity in the form of the "caring professions." The most notable instance
of this role is in the field of transpersonal psychology, which has created a par-
adigm of mental health that views the practice of meditation as a higher form
of mental therapy, rather than as a reversion to infantile states, which was the
view previously held by many professional psychologists. Although the theo-
ries of transpersonal psychology draw as much on Hinduism and Sufism as
they do on Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, they have played an important role in
making the practice of meditation in general intellectually respectable to pro-
fessional psychotherapists. Some therapists even now recommend meditation
to their patients, practice it themselves, and advertise their meditational back-
ground as part of their professional credentials. Similarly, the medical profes-
sion has adopted elementary techniques from Buddhist meditation to treat
hypertension and enable patients to cope with chronic severe pain. Social
workers in prisons and inner-city neighborhoods have adopted similar tech-
niques to help their clients handle stress.
12.2.2 The Appropriation of Buddhist IdeasThe climate of tolerance and eclecticism in which the study of Buddhism de-
veloped has given rise, from the very beginning, to the question of whether
Buddhist doctrines might have valid lessons for westerners. Buddhologists
themselves have, from time to time, taken stances on this question; some, such
as T. W Rhys Davids, who founded the Pali Text Society in 1886, have re-