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

Buddhist Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

, soldier in the

British Indian Army The Indian Army was the force of British Raj, British India, until Indian Independence Act 1947, national independence in 1947. Formed in 1895 by uniting the three Presidency armies, it was responsible for the defence of both British India and ...

, 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 an Anglo-Irish 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 Lieute ...

and his wife Louisa, born at North End, Fulham. He was an officer in the

. 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 ) is a sport which involves hitting wooden, plastic, or composite balls with a mallet through hoops (often called Wicket, "wickets" in the United States) embedded in a grass playing court. Variations In all forms of croquet, in ...

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 (), 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 quotations by the early Church Fathers and in apocryphal writi ...

. 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 (; – 8 May 1891), often known as Madame Blavatsky, was a Russian-born Mysticism, mystic and writer who emigrated to the United States where she co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. She gained an internat ...

and the

Theosophical Society The Theosophical Society is the organizational body of Theosophy, an esoteric new religious movement. It was founded in New York City, U.S.A. in 1875. Among its founders were Helena Blavatsky, a Russian mystic and the principal thinker of the ...

. He believed that Blavatsky had faked the Mahatma letters 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: novel' (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. In 2009, the company produced 190,175 titles and was reported to be the third-largest prod ...

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 British critics of Christianity Critics of Theosophy English Buddhists English landscape painters People from Fulham Writers from the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham

Biography

Books

References

Further reading

External links