Indeed. And he was totally ignorant of that which he wrote about. Reading his work is totally surreal.Malcolm wrote:False, the term was coined by Waddel, who hated Tibetans as much as he was fascinated by them.Coëmgenu wrote:No one made up "Lamaism" because they hated Tibetans.
"Donald Lopez regards Lamaism as a foreign construct, devised by Chinese expansionists and Western Orientalists in the late eighteenth century. By implying that Buddhism established itself in Tibet only as an addendum to earlier animist or primitive forms of Tibetan religion, Lamaism misconstrues the Tibetan faith as something distinct from pure Buddhism. Although Lopez does not deny that preexisting folk religions helped shape Tibetan Buddhism, he thinks the term "Lamaism" vastly exaggerates their influence. By Victorian times, Lamaism had become one of the era's "historicisms...a fundamental trope in the history that late Victorian colonialism wrote for itself." The trope made it "easier to portray Tibet as entirely other and hence incapable of its own representation." -- http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/ ... pence.html
"Lopez shows that earlier writers misleadingly borrowed the Tibetan term "lama" and appended "-ism." Protestant chauvinism chose that term to signify "the corrupt priestscraft," as Catholicism was viewed by European protestants and Anglicans (p. 17). In the process of classifying, indigenous view is discounted as either unscientific or irrelevant. Today, the term "lamaism" has been more or less discarded in the academic field; nevertheless, it still creeps into popular literature and there is a residual trace in western perception that the religion of Tibet is a debased form of the original Buddhism. Today, this debate has openly resurfaced among Chinese sociologists and academics and it has incensed the Tibetans." -- Tsering Shakya
"The most common Western name for Tibetan Buddhism, "Lamaism," is considered a disparaging term by Tibetans. At the end of the nineteenth century, both England and Russia wanted to add Tibet to their empires. Europeans typically justified colonialism by portraying the colony as a culturally deficient land that needed to be saved from itself. So Tibet was depicted as an irrational place with superstitious people living under the yoke of corrupt and evil priests. The religion of these priests, Westerners claimed, was not an authentic form of Buddhism and so did not deserve the name, instead they called it "Lamaism." Western scholars depicted true Buddhism as a religion of reason and restraint, filled with deep philosophy and free from the confines of ritual. In fact, such a pure form of Buddhism never existed in Asia, and was to be found only in the libraries and lecture halls of Europe and America." -- Donald Lopez
Some random Waddell quotes:
- "By the Nyingma-pa, the great wizard Guru Pema is worshipped as "a second Buddha", in spite of his uncelibate life, his semi-demoniac temper, and his being altogether void of any of the admirable traits of Buddha."
- "The temple had no place in primitive Buddhism. It is the outcome of the worship of relics and images, and dates from the later and impurer stage of Buddhism"
- Regarding food offerings he has this to say: "This feast is observed by all sects of lamas, Nyingmapa, Gelukpa &c., and is an interesting sample of devil-worship."
It goes on and on. Everything he writes about Tibetans is negative. Their culture is negative, their religion is negative, Tibetans themselves are portrayed negative. It's all about how degenerate, primitive, impure, bad, etc. Tibetans are. The term "Lamaism" which of course is highly inaccurate just like Waddell's writings, is used in a negative derogatory fashion. There's no way around that fact.
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