book-series-introduced-in-the-1870s

"The fallacy originated from the unhesitating belief of Müller that Christianity and Europe blossomed forth ahead of the growth of any civilization at any point of time in human history. All his efforts were in tune with the resurrection of those lost kins. As he spoke in the Hibbert lecture series on 21 June 1878, ‘I hope the time will come when the subterranean area of human religion will be rendered more and more accessible,… and that the Science of Religion, which at present is but a desire and a seed, will in time become a fulfillment and a plenteous harvest. When that time of harvest has come, when the deepest foundations of all the religions of the world have been laid free and restored’. Of course, his other labour of love was, to explain his critics that his efforts are actually dedicated towards Christianity—‘I feel very certain, that this translation of the Sacred Books of the East , which some of the good people here consider most objectionable, will do a great deal towards lifting Christianity into its high historical position’. Müller wrote to lady Welby on July 27, 1879."

"In a letter dated 5 January 1883, he wrote—‘I saw the other day that some Buddhists in Japan meant to start what they call a „Bible Society“ for printing and distributing portions of the Tripitaka. I prefer to speak of „Sacred Books.“ Strictly speaking, “Sacred Books” are such only as have received some canonical sanction, and form a body of writings to which nothing could be added. They need not be considered of Divine origin or revealed, but they must have been formally recognized as authoritative by a religious body or their representatives’."

"These Sacred Books of the East will become in future the foundation of a short but universal religion."

"In a letter dated 4 September 1881, he wrote to B. Malabari, an Indian poet and social reformer, on his perceived influence that Hibbert lectures would have on Indian minds—‘the views put forward in my Hibbert lectures are the result of the studies which have not ignored any one of the objections raised against religion whether in England or in India…There is no religion which does not contain some truth, none which contains the whole truth…The first duty which every student of religion has to perform is to make himself acquainted with the books on which each religion claims to be founded. Hence my publication of the Sacred Books of the East , i.e. of the world, for all religions comes from the East’."

"It was in the 1880s that Max Müller ’s arch-rival at Oxford, Monier-Williams , began to move away from his previously liberal position on ‘Oriental’ religions and to become increasingly critical of the ‘limp-wristed comparative scholarship’ exemplified by Müller’s Sacred Books, a project which he denounced in 1887 as an ‘unmanly’ example of ‘jelly-fish tolerance’."