Du Nirvana bouddhique, en reponse a M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire (On the Buddhist Nirvana, in Response to Mr. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire)
Paris: Auguste Durand, 1863. First edition. Octavo. 240 pp. Quarter vellum over marbled boards, gilt spine with black morocco lettering piece; original printed wrappers preserved. Light wear at extremities; bookplates and old dealer label at front paste-down. Occasional mild, mostly marginal foxing. A very good, amply margined copy, attractively bound.
First edition of this rare dissertation, a response to Jules Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire’s Le Bouddha et sa religion (1860). Jean Baptiste François Obry (1793-1871) had delivered a shorter and more general paper on the Indian concept of nirvana at the Academie d’Amiens in 1856. Along with Philippe Edouard Foucaux, a specialist in Tibetan studies, Obry was the major antagonist of Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire on the nirvana question. “Obry’s contribution is more on the order of a testament -- a passionate and not wholly unreasonable plea for a positive interpretation of nirvana. Not only does it illustrate the impact of Buddhist thought on mid-nineteenth century Europe, but hidden within the cumbersome manuscript are several statements and citations which have much more than mere antiquarian interest for the Buddhist scholar a hundred years later” (Welbon). With respect to Obry's chapter “Rapports du Christianisme et du Bouddhisme sur les doctrines de la vie future,” Welbon notes “Dozens of analogies between Buddhism and Christianity are listed with evident relish. Of them one may be mentioned which is both interesting and typical: ‘Their ascetics think that one must die to the world in order to live in the Buddha in nirvana, just as our mystics teach that one must die to the world in order to live in Christ in Paradise’” (Obry, 181).
Provenance: With the early Parisian bookseller’s label of Dourbon Ainé at the front pastedown, along with two booksplates, that of James Magee obscuring the name on a prior armorial plate. Item #50137
References: G. R. Welbon, Buddhist Nirvana and Its Western Interpreters (Univ. Chicago, 1968), p. 86.
Price: $200.00