Asian Religions in America

This book presents the American encounter with Asian religions through a wide range of documents - written and visual from elite and popular culture- dating from 1788 to the present. The entries are divided into four chronological periods. The first section traces the initial attempts to map the earliest contacts, up to 1840; the second section, from 1840 to 1924, presents the first real passages-from east to west and west to east; the third, from 1924 to 1965,
sketches a drifting period when immigration had stopped and Euro-American interst in Asian religions was minimal; and the final section, which takes us to the present, covers a time when the encounter intensifies greatly.