Charles Pfoundes and the forgotten first Buddhist Mission to the West, London 1889

This paper develops some research questions potentially relevant to the study of many aspects of the emergence of modern global Buddhism, drawing on the first detailed account (Bocking, Cox and Yoshinaga, 2014) of Charles Pfoundes' efforts to establish the first Western Buddhist Mission in London in 1889 (published in DISKUS, 2014 - http://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/DISKUS/index.php/DISKUS/article/view/51/44 ) . Topics raised in this paper include: ostensible aims vs. aims achieved, in Buddhist activities; facilitating and constraining factors for modernising Buddhist travellers; colonising the "non-denominational" space'; the telegraph – Buddhist access to "the Victorian internet"; and Pfoundes’ ‘family life’.