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“Although the discussions of quietism and nihilism conveyed by the Jesuits during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries paved the way for Western characterizations of Buddhism, only during the nineteenth century was Buddhism definitively constituted as an obiect of discourse and "reified as a textual object" (Almond 1988, 139). This textualization permitted the emergence of the "historical" Buddha and the convenient opposition between a pure, canonical, early Buddhism and the degenerate Buddhist religion of contemporary Asia (Almond 1988, 25, 37-40).” — Bernard Faure
Although the discussions of quietism and nihilism conveyed by the Jesuits during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries paved the way for Western characterizations of Buddhism, only during the nineteenth century was Buddhism definitively constituted as an obiect of discourse and "reified as a textual object" (Almond 1988, 139). This textualization permitted the emergence of the "historical" Buddha and the convenient opposition between a pure, canonical, early Buddhism and the degenerate Buddhist religion of contemporary Asia (Almond 1988, 25, 37-40).