Whether from India or elsewhere, the study of Muslim depictions of Buddhism typically boils down to discussing a handful of well-known sources—and problematic conflations of the generic term for an idol (but) and the specific figure of Buddha. This talk surveys a larger corpus of medieval and modern accounts of Buddhism in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu to show it was only in the late nineteenth century that the Buddha re-emerged as a historical figure as distinct from an idol. Yet this occurred as much through new Indian encounters with Burma, Ceylon, Afghanistan, China, and Japan as through the rediscovery of India’s own Buddhist past. By tracing not only mechanisms of memory, but also the process of forgetting the Buddha in South Asia, we will see how new intellectual disciplines and collaborations transformed the but back into Buddha.

Nile Green holds the Ibn Khaldun Endowed Chair in World History at UCLA. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he is the author of ten monographs, most recently Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah (Norton, 2024), How Asia Found Herself: A Story of Intercultural Understanding (Yale, 2022), which won the Bentley Prize from the World History Association, and Global Islam: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2020). His is also the editor of eight books, including a forthcoming volume on Muslim Sri Lanka. He hosts the podcast Akbar’s Chamber: Experts Talk Islam.