Arthur Lillie (24 February 1831 – 28 November 1911), was a

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

, soldier in the British Indian Army, and a writer.

Biography

Lillie, christened as George Arthur Howard, was the youngest son of

Sir John Scott Lillie Sir John Scott Lillie (1790 – 29 June 1868) was a decorated officer of the British Army and Portuguese Army who fought in the Peninsular War (1808–1814). He was a landowner, entrepreneur and inventor. He was Deputy Lieutenant of the C ...

and his wife Louisa, born at

North End, Fulham North End was, until the last quarter of the 19th-century, a scattered hamlet among the fields and market gardens, between Counter's Creek and Walham Green in the Parish of Fulham in the County of Middlesex. In connection with the development o ...

. He was an officer in the British Indian Army. While in India, he became a

. His books on religion were poorly received by scholars. Lillie appears to have written the original rule book for a Scottish

croquet Croquet ( or ; french: croquet) is a sport that involves hitting wooden or plastic balls with a mallet through hoops (often called "wickets" in the United States) embedded in a grass playing court. Its international governing body is the W ...

tournament, which, if so, continues to be his best-received work. Arthur Lillie also took an enthusiastic interest in

Gospel of the Hebrews The Gospel of the Hebrews ( grc, τὸ καθ' Ἑβραίους εὐαγγέλιον), or Gospel according to the Hebrews, is a lost Jewish–Christian gospel. The text of the gospel is lost, with only fragments of it surviving as brief quot ...

. In ''Buddhism in Christendom Or Jesus the Essene'' he wrote :''At any rate the account of the last supper in the Gospel of the Hebrews was manifestly quite different from the accounts given in our present gospels. There we see nothing about James drinking out of Christ's cup, a fact which proves that the contents of the cup must have been water, for St. James was bound by the vow of the Nazarite to drink water for life.'' He was critical of the claims of

Helena Blavatsky Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, uk, Олена Петрівна Блаватська, Olena Petrivna Blavatska (; – 8 May 1891), often known as Madame Blavatsky, was a Russian mystic and author who co-founded the Theosophical Society in 187 ...

and the

Theosophical Society The Theosophical Society, founded in 1875, is a worldwide body with the aim to advance the ideas of Theosophy in continuation of previous Theosophists, especially the Greek and Alexandrian Neo-Platonic philosophers dating back to 3rd century CE ...

. He believed that Blavatsky had faked the

Mahatma letters ''The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett'' is a book published in 1923 by A. Trevor Barker. () According to Theosophical teachings, the letters were written between 1880 and 1884 by Koot Hoomi and Morya to A. P. Sinnett. The letters were previous ...

and was a plagiarist. Maskelyne, John Nevil. (1912). ''The Fraud of Modern "Theosophy" Exposed''. G. Routledge & Sons. p. 83. "Mr. Lillie, as a student of Eastern literature, has attacked Madame Blavatsky for her plagiarisms laboriously and has given extracts side by side with the books she copied. Mr. Lillie has also proved that the Mahatma letters were written by Madame Blavatsky, for he has pointed out certain peculiarities of her composition and spelling in them." Lillie became a landscape painter and joined the Suffolk painters. He remained a bachelor and, when in England, shared a household, first with his widowed aunt, Alicia Bunbury, and then with his unmarried sister, Louisa. He died in Kensington in 1911, aged 80.

Books

*''Buddha and early Buddhism'' (1881) *''The Popular Life of Buddha: Containing an Answer to the "Hibbert Lectures" of 1881'' (1883) *''Buddhism in Christendom, Or, Jesus, the Essene'' (1887) *''The Cobra Diamond'' (1890) *''The Influence of Buddhism on Primitive Christianity'' (1893) *''Madame Blavatsky and Her "theosophy": A Study'' (1895) *''Croquet: Its History, Rules, and Secrets.'' (1897) *''Croquet Up to Date: Containing the Ideas and Teachings of the Leading Players and Champions'' (1900) *''India in Primitive Christianity'' (1909) *''Râma and Homer: An Argument that in the Indian Epics Homer Found the Theme of His Two Great Poems'' (1912) *''Gospel of the Hebrews'' 30 page article extracted from ''Influence of Buddhism on Primitive Christianity'' 1893 by

Kessinger Publishing Kessinger Publishing LLC is an American print-on-demand publishing company located in Whitefish, Montana, that specializes in rare, out-of-print books. According to Kelly Gallagher, vice president of publishing services at a bibliographic inform ...

and listed as 2005.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lillie, Arthur 1831 births 1911 deaths British people of Irish descent British writers British Indian Army officers Buddhist writers Critics of Christianity Critics of Theosophy English Buddhists English landscape painters People from Fulham

Biography

Books

References

Further reading

External links