La réception du bouddhisme chez Léon de Rosny. De commentateur à acteur : évolution d’une trajectoire

Buddhism was one of the various scholarly interests of Léon de Rosny. Seeing himself as both an Orientalist and a Japanologist, he read and wrote on a variety of related topics, from Indian Buddhism to the various Japanese schools of Buddhism. His views also evolved as he gained more knowledge on the subject, by acquiring books or through his meetings with Japanese travelers in Paris, like Shimaji Mokurai in 1872. But Rosny never wrote a treatise on the subject. Instead, his writings on Buddhism span through decades of works of various kinds, from conference proceedings to the appendix of a theater play. In this chapter, we will go through the most representative writings of Rosny on the subject and classify his works on Buddhism in distinct periods. We will then examine how his positions evolved, and how his ever-evolving relation to Buddhism influenced the path of his life and career as a scholar