Greece, Rome, The Celtic Lands, Northern and Eastern Europe

The prehistoric gods and goddesses of what modern archaeology terms ‘Old Europe’, the Aegean, the Adriatic, the Balkans, and the western Ukraine, were concerned with the task of sustaining life. Snakes, birds, and eggs predominate in the cults so far discovered; the chief deities were the mother goddess, whose domain included fertility and the afterlife, and a male god of vegetation, the prototype of the Dionysus. The power of the earth mother over death found pictorial expression in such things as the caterpillar, the chrysalis, and the butterfly. Since there is no evidence from the New Stone Age that mankind understood biological conception, the ubiquity of phallic symbols connotes a glorification of spontaneous life forces. With the inception of agriculture, however, the first farmers began to observe natural phenomena more closely and more intensively than the previous hunters and food-gatherers had done. A separate vegetation goddess emerged, connected with the Great Mother, but primarily responsible for the sowing of the sacred seeds on which life had come increasingly to depend.

The prehistoric pantheon reflects a society dominated by the mother. The role of woman was not apparently subject to that of man, so that in the Minoan civilization of ancient Crete (c. 2000–1450 BC) the feminine spirit could continue to flourish. This first European civilization was pre-Greek, and certainly owed something to early contacts with Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. Even the legendary Minos, from whom Sir ArthurEvans coined the term Minoan when excavating his palace at Knossos, was remembered by the Greeks as the descendant of a West Asian king. His father, ‘cloud-gathering’ Zeus, had abducted his mother Europa from the court of Agenor, King of Tyre.

The outstanding myth-makers of Europe, the Greeks themselves, superimposed their own Indo-European beliefs upon the heritage of ‘Old Europe’ some time during the second millennium BC. The first phase of their power, the Mycenaean era (1550–1150 BC), was named after the great citadel of Mycenae, the seat of Agamemnon in the Peloponnese. The religion of this period was an amalgam of Mycenaean and Minoan practices, in which the Indo-European cult of the sky god Zeus gradually came to dominate the indigenous tradition that exalted the earth goddess. However, the strength of the cult of Hera, literally ‘lady’, was sufficiently strong in the Argolid to cause the assimilation of this local mother goddess as sister and wife of Zeus. It seems conceivable that later legends about her jealousy and quarrelsomeness recall the intense rivalry once existing between their two cults.

Soon after 700 BC Hesiod tried to unravel the complexity belonging to the Greek myths, a characteristic that can be attributed in part to migration and war. The development of the gods is the subject of his Theogony, which seeks universal order through the tracing out of genealogical relationships. The poem relates the progress of Zeus, the events by which this powerful son of Kronos, the first usurper of the world, achieved his own supremacy and established his abode on Mount Olympus. It contains a rich array of gods and heroes dating back to Mycenaean times, when each important city had a mythical genealogy for its ruling house, and in the exploits of the legendary heroes we encounter a singular feature of Greek mythology. Few traditions possess the equivalent of Jason, Heracles, and Asclepius. In India the theory of the avatar always ensures that the divinity of Rama or Krishna is not forgotten, while in ancient Mesopotamia the travail of Gilgamesh marked him off from other priest kings. In Egypt a very circumscribed mythology stemmed from the unusual domination of the pharaoh and the priesthood: it concentrated on the fate of the soul after death. Among the ancient Greeks we find no such other-worldliness, for the gods were encountered as much in the street as in the temple. The gap between immortals and mortals was never great—both were members of the same community. ‘Of one race’, wrote Pindar in the fifth century BC, ‘are men and gods. Born of one mother we draw our breath, though in strength are gods and men far divided.’

The traveller and historian Herodotus, a contemporary of the poet Pindar, believed that most of the Greek gods were borrowed from Egypt, the obvious antiquity of which deeply impressed him. Although he was wrong to single out this country as the origin of Greek mythology, he did perceive that the Eastern Mediterranean had been a cultural continuum for a very long time. Contacts with Asia Minor must have played a part in the meteoric development of Greek civilization.

We are now aware, for instance, of cultural contacts between the Mycenaean Greeks and the Hittites, who controlled most of Asia Minor until 1400 BC. Indeed, the cult of Zeus Labraundos borrowed heavily from the Hittite weather god, the slayer of the dragon Illuyankas. Contacts in Cyprus, where Greeks had settled before 1250 BC, brought to Europe the formidable Aphrodite, descendant of the mother goddess Astarte in the Ras Shamra texts, the archive of the ancient Syrian city of Ugarit. Goddess of love, beauty, and fertility, Aphrodite even introduced the West Asian custom of temple prostitution into the Greek and Roman world. Yet there was soon in existence a sceptical attitude towards mythology, an impatience with the scandalous behaviour of the gods. In the sixth century BC Xenophanes of Colophon, tilting at the blatant human attributes of the Olympian gods, said that if cattle could draw, they would make their own gods in the likeness of cattle. Such a philosophical standpoint did not affect popular Greek religion, though in time it separated logos, thought, from mythos, myth. Reasoning, advocated as wisdom by Heraclitus of Ephesus some years later, became the instrument for comprehending the intelligible universe. As Heraclitus said: ‘This world which is the same for all, no god or man has made; but it is ever, is now, and ever shall be an ever-living fire, with parts of it kindling, and parts going out.’ By 316 BC Euhemerus, a Sicilian philosopher resident at the Macedonian court, might argue that all the ancient myths were historical events. His Sacred History represented the gods as originally men who had distinguished themselves and who after their death received divine honours from a grateful people.

Conquest of the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, an historical event of the first importance that was almost complete prior to the birth of Christ, made imperial Rome the metropolis of the ancient world as well as the inheritor of its several mythological traditions. While none could resist the tramp of the Roman legions, the conquered peoples discovered to their surprise that the citizens of Rome were quite defenceless against foreign religions. This was particularly true of the relationship between Greece and Rome. The process of assimilation had begun in the second half of the fourth century BC when Rome, as a major Italian power, had come into contact with the city-states of the Greek world. Upstart Rome was needled by its lack of tradition, the absence of a glorious past filled with gods and heroes, and to its historians fell the task of creating a worthy chronology. They obliged. Rome at last found itself in possession of a national tradition dating from the Trojan War all the more complete and harmonious because its historians had taken care to make it so. The embellishment of the legend of Roman origins received state recognition in 239 BC, when the Senate granted its protection to the Acarnanians, harassed by the Aetolians, because they alone of the Greeks had held aloof from hostilities against the Trojans, the ancestors of the Roman people. The classic treatment of this myth occurs in Virgil's Aeneid, composed to celebrate the establishment of the Empire by Augustus in 31 BC.

There were other influences on early Romans too. Close at hand were their chief rivals, the Etruscans and the Carthaginians. ‘The might of the Etruscans, before the Romans rose to power’, wrote the historian Livy, a contemporary of Virgil, ‘stretched widely over land and sea … from the Alps to the Sicilian Straits.’ Rome itself had been ruled by Etruscan kings, and the Romans were aware of the role of Etruria in spreading Greek and West Asian culture among the Italic peoples. Our present ignorance of the Etruscan language precludes judgemet: we are uncertain of the original Etruscan homeland, though Asia Minor seems a likely candidate, and apart from the skill of the Etruscans in divination, the observation of the entrails of sacrificial beasts, we know little more than the names of their gods. More details are available on Carthage, the colony founded in Africa by the Phoenicians in 814 BC, but its impact on Rome was entirely negative and can be summed up in one word: Hannibal. The ordeal of the Hannibalic invasion, fifteen years of defeat and devastation (217–203 BC), implanted in the Romans a phobia of great powers within striking distance of the Italian peninsula. Rome sought to patrol the Mediterranean lands, striking down any state that showed any sign of independence, even in 146 BC destroying the reduced cities of Carthage and Corinth. The consequence of this policy was the collapse of the Roman Republic and the founding of the Roman Empire.

The architect of Roman dominion was JuliusCaesar, who spent the decade before he overthrew the Republic in the conquest and annexation of Gaul, the heartland of the Celtic people. In 55 BC he had reconnoitred the southern coast of Britain, though Roman invasion of the island was begun only a century later. The long campaign in Gaul welded his legions into an invincible army, making him the chief war-lord as well as monarch till he was assassinated in 44 BC. He advanced the Roman frontier to the Rhine, created several large provinces, and, not least, brought the majority of the Celts into direct communication with the ancient world.

The Celts first appear in Germany. From the ninth century BC onwards waves of migrants spread into Gaul, the Iberian peninsula, northern Italy, the Balkans, Asia Minor, and Britain. One wandering band even sacked the city of Rome in 386 BC. The geographical dispersal of the Celtic people explains the lack of unity in their mythology, since each group of migrants encountered different local conditions in settlement. The last migration, for instance, was the invasion of Britain in the first century BC by the Belgians. Although the priests known as Druids have acquired a popular status due to the writings of antiquarians, there is little evidence of their dominant position in Celtic religion. The order may have been restricted to Britain and Gaul. JuliusCaesar learned of its teaching that it ‘was invented in Britain and taken from there to Gaul, and … that diligent students of the discipline mostly travel there to study it.’ Moreover, the association of the Druidic grove and Stonehenge has become so established as a piece of British folklore that we do not often recall that this theory is hardly 300 years old. The function of Stonehenge, a pre-Celtic monument, probably dating from 1500 BC at its final stage of construction, is unknown. Because the Celts chose to rely on oral tradition—Julius Caesar noted that the Druids ‘were unwilling, first, that their system of training should be bruited abroad among the common people and second, that the student should rely on the written word and neglect memory’—there are few sources of evidence for their religion, a circumstance ensuring that it will remain forever a mystery. The legendary cycles of medieval Ireland, and the derivative Arthurian tradition in Wales, Brittany, and England, have to represent Celtic mythology.

When in 313 Christianity obtained complete toleration in the Roman Empire, the change of fortune for this West Asian faith had as much effect on the Celts living within the imperial borders as on any of the other peoples. It signalled the general retreat of what Christians termed ‘pagan’ mythology. In 312 the Emperor Constantine had had a dream, in which Christ appeared to him and told him that if he put a Christian sign on the shields of his soldiers, he would triumph over his rival. Having painted the sign on the shields of at least some of his men, he went on to the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, where his army won a startling victory. Although Constantine delayed baptism until he was on his deathbed twenty-five years later, the edict of 313 set aside discriminatory legislation, and ordered not only freedom of worship but the restoration of all property confiscated from the Church during previous persecution. With the notable exception of Julian, who reigned 360–3, successive emperors issued decrees against non-Christian sacrifices, adoration of images, entry to temples, and magic. Pagan apologists were on the defensive, conceding much of the Church's case. Christian zealots, moreover, seized the opportunity to destroy ancient cult centres, like the Serapeum at Alexandria. In 391. Bishop Theophilus led his militant congregation in an attack on this temple, said to be the largest in the ancient world, and burned it to the ground. Elsewhere temples were either demolished, the stones being used to erect churches, or converted, the clergy purifying them of pagan associations. One of the first to be consecrated at Rome was the round Temple of Faunus, the Roman Pan, which Pope Simplicius (468–83) named St StephanoRotondo.

A consequence of the policy of adaptation was undoubtedly a lingering paganism. The faithful reported the presence of demons, which the later evolution of the gargoyle may have been intended to frighten away. In 530 on Monte Cassino St Benedict came across a grove sacred to Apollo, where the ancient rites were still observed. When he destroyed the shrine and converted the place to Christian use, Satan appeared to complain, but the Saint kept silence. His companions heard, but could not see, the Devil. In the old western provinces of the Roman Empire the pagan myths openly persisted, especially in the nature cults of the countryside. Christian bishops and saints waged a long struggle against these heretical tendencies, which were partly strengthened by the folklore of the Germanic peoples who poured across the Rhine. Yet medieval Christianity was not without its own legends: among other things the minds of believers were exercised by Antichrist; dies irae, the wrath of the last day; relics; the cult of the Virgin; miraculous events, signs, and portents; as well as the omnipresent forces of the evil. The age of belief made its contribution to the store of world mythology.

In the fifth century the Western Roman Empire was overrun by Germanic peoples fleeing westwards from the Huns. Rome itself was looted by the Visigoths in 410 and by the Vandals in 455. Such was the thoroughness of the second sack that these wandering tribesmen have given their name to those who take pleasure in the wilful destruction of beautiful things. The Vandals had crossed from Spain to Africa in 429, only two to three years after crossing the Rhine, and St Augustine lived long enough to witness their seizure of Hippo, the city that was his episcopal see. His famous treatise De Civitate Dei, or City of God, can be regarded as an attempt to make sense for Christians out of the collapse of Roman authority. Especially galling was the rumour that the fall of Rome was a punishment inflicted by the non-Christian gods for the suppression of their worship in 391–2.

While St Augustine refuted heretical theories of history, the northern invaders completed their conquest of the western provinces. The defeat of the Huns by a combined army of Romans and Visigoths at Troyes in 451 as well as the death of the Hun war leader Attila two years later were insufficient to save the Western Roman Empire, the victim of internal weakness rather than the strength of Germanic arms. It was unable to withstand the movement of peoples and the hegemony of Western Europe passed into the hands of its traditional enemies. Ever since JuliusCaesar had advanced the frontier to the Rhine, the Romans knew that the warlike tribes roaming the forests across that river inhabited another mythological world. Writing in 98, Tacitus mentions the Germanic legend of tribal origin: ‘In their ancient ballads, their only form of recorded history, they celebrate Tvisto, a god sprung from the earth, and they assign him a son called Mannus, their progenitor through his three sons.’ The Romans were fully aware too that Scandinavia equalled a vagina nationum, ‘a womb of nations’, continually sending forth new waves of migration. What they could not know was that the Germanic settlers of the north belonged to the Indo-European language group from which the Italic tongue had descended. In a similar manner the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, who had occupied Britain after the withdrawal of the Roman legions in 423, were confronted in the later Viking invasions with an assault by less distant, but more ferocious, cousins.

The original Indo-European speakers dispersed from an unknown homeland about 2500 BC. The branch known to the Romans as the Germani traced their own past back to Scandinavia. Descendants of this stock today include Germans, Dutch, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Icelanders, English, and any of their extraction. At the time the Roman Empire fell we have little detailed information on Germanic mythology. Other than brief runic inscriptions, there were no written records till the Christian era, those on Iceland only beginning in the year 1000. It happens that mythological literature was for the most part preserved on this island, which after the 874 migration joined to the Viking world. The greatest contribution to the understanding of Germanic legend was made by the Icelandic scholar and statesman Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241), whose Prose Edda comprises a handbook for poets on the world of the ancient gods, providing explanations of metaphors based on the old myths. The Viking Age, 750–1050, saw the development of a vigorous cosmology revolving round the heroic deeds of Odin, Thor, and the brother-sister deities, Frey and Freya, and it is this late tradition that Snorri interprets for us. Elsewhere in Western Europe the Germanic conquerors soon converted to Christianity. The reign of Charlemagne (768–814) represents the triumph of the Christian Church; the Frankish kingdom acted as the champion of the Catholic faith, embattled with heretics and pagans alike. In his campaigns against his Saxon kinsmen Charlemagne was conspicuously intolerant of non-Christian practices. While the inhabitants of Scandinavia remained undisturbed, the activities of missionaries carried the faith beyond the borders of the Franks. In 597 Augustine landed on Thanet with a mission to convert the English.

Russia was only converted to Christianity in 989, when the converts joined the Eastern Orthodox Church, not the Roman Catholic Church. This event opened the way for the eastern tradition of Christendom to expand northwards to the shore of the Arctic Ocean and eastwards to the shore of the Pacific Ocean. Greek missionaries found a primitive mythology among the Slavs, but the old beliefs did not long survive the official abolition of pagan worship for the reason that Christianity exercised a civilizing influence. The Slavs and the Balts, their closest linguistic neighbours, appear to have possessed gods with names strikingly reminiscent of Indo-Iranian and Thraco-Phrygian deities. Indeed, the Slavic rai, paradise, has been acknowledged as a direct borrowing from the Iranian ray, meaning heavenly radiance, or beauty. The storm god Perunu, the wielder of the thunderbolt, received sumptuous worship at Kiev till the tenth century, and he is one of the few Slavic deities about whom we have details, albeit from the account of the discontinuation of his cult. The rest of the mythology of Eastern Europe remains lost in the mists of the pre-Christian era.

Lastly, in the northernmost parts of Europe there are still to be found the scattered remnants of an ancient people, the Uralians. The Lapps of Finland, the Samoyeds of Russia, along with several smaller groups inhabiting the tundra, preserve in their folklore the traditions of a people that must have begun to scatter about the fourth millennium BC. Their beliefs are similar to those held by the tribesmen of Siberia, a link strongly suggesting an original shamanism. Evidence of the former activities of medicine-men, spirit-possessed priests, is provided in the accounts given by early visitors to the Lapps. An eighteenth-century Danish traveller witnessed the trance into which such a medium fell, after a series of whirling dances. During the time that he was unconscious of the immediate surroundings—his spirit it was said having journeyed to the land of the dead in order to master the spirit afflicting his patient—the medium could handle burning logs and swing an axe against his knees without suffering the least harm. On his return to consciousness, he announced the nature of the malady and the length of time it would take for the sick person to recover. Traces of sorcery are evident, too, in the ancient beliefs of the Finns, Voguls, and Hungarians, all of whom have descended from Uralian stock. The idea that every living thing was animated by a spirit appears to have been extended by the Hungarians to every limb and organ. Each had its separate soul; a chronicle of 899 records that for magical reasons the Hungarians ate the hearts of captives.

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(′yu̇r·əp)

(geography) A great western peninsula of the Eurasian landmass, usually called a continent; its eastern limits are arbitrary and are conventionally drawn along the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, and the Caucasus watershed to the Black Sea.

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The sixth-largest continent, extending west from the Dardanelles, Black Sea, and Ural Mountains. It is technically a vast peninsula of the Eurasian land mass.

 

Although long called a continent, in many physical ways Europe is but a great western peninsula of the Eurasian landmass. Its eastern limits are arbitrary and are conventionally drawn along the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, and the Caucasus watershed to the Black Sea. On all other sides Europe is surrounded by salt water. Of the oceanic islands of Franz Josef Land, Spitsbergen (Svalbard), Iceland, and the Azores, only Iceland is regarded as an integral part of Europe; thus the northwestern boundary is drawn along the Danish Strait.

Europe is not only peninsular but has a large ratio of shoreline to land area reflecting a notable interfingering of land and sea. Excluding Iceland, the maximum north-south distance is (3529 mi) (5680 km); and the greatest east-west extent is 2398 mi (3860 km). Of Europe's area of 3,881,000 mi² (10,050,000 km²) 73% is mainland, 19% peninsulas, and 8% islands. Also, 51% of the land is less than 155 mi (250 km) from shores and another 23% lies closer than 310 mi (500 km). This situation is caused by the inland seas that enter, like arms of the ocean, deep into the northern and southern regions of Europe, which thus becomes a peninsula of peninsulas. The most notable of these branching arms of salt water are the White Sea, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea with the Gulf of Bothnia, the English Channel (La Manche), the Mediterranean Sea with its secondary branches, and finally, the Black Sea. Even the Caspian Sea, presently the largest saltwater lake of the world, formed part of the southern seas before the folding of the Caucasus. The penetration of the landmass by these seas brings marine influences deep into the continent and provides Europe with a balanced climate favorable for human evolution and settlement.

Europe has a unique diversity of land forms and natural resources. The relief, as varied as that of other continents, has an average elevation of 980 ft (300 m) as compared with North America's 1440 ft (440 m). The shape and the overall physiographic aspect of the great peninsula are controlled by geologic structure which delimits the major regional units.

Climate is determined by a number of factors. Probably the most important are a favorable location between 35° and 71°N latitudes on the western or more maritime side of the world's largest continental mass; the west-to-east trend (rather than north-south) of the lofty southern ranges and the Central Lowlands, as well as of the inland seas, which permit the prevailing westerly winds of these latitudes to carry marine influences deep into the continent; the beneficial influence of the North Atlantic Drift, which makes possible ice-free coasts far within the Arctic Circle; and the low elevation of the northwestern mountain ranges and the Urals, which allows the free shifting of air masses over their crests.

The intricate relief and the climates of Europe are well reflected in the drainage system. Extensive drainage basins with large slow-flowing rivers are developed only in the Central Lowlands, especially in the eastern part. Streams with the greatest discharge empty into the Black Sea and the North Sea, although Europe's longest river, the Volga, feeds the Caspian Sea. Second in dimension is the Danube, which crosses the Carpathian Basin and cuts its way twice through mountain ranges at the Gate of Bratislava and at the Iron Gate. The Rhine and Rhone are the two major Alpine rivers with headwater sources close to each other but feeding the North Sea and the Western Mediterranean Basin, respectively. Abundant precipitation throughout the year, as well as the permeable soils and the dense vegetation which temporarily store the water, provides the streams of Europe north of the Southern Highlands with ample water throughout the seasons. The combined effects of poor vegetation, rocky and desolate limestone karstlands, and slight annual precipitation result in intermittent flow of the rivers along the Mediterranean coast, especially on the eastern side of peninsulas. Only the Alpine rivers carry enough water, and if it were not for the Danube and Rhone, both originating in regions north of the Alps, the only major river of the Mediterranean basin would be the Po. See also Atlantic Ocean; Baltic Sea; Black Sea; Continent; Mediterranean Sea.

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Criteria for defining ‘Europe’, as opposed to the continent of Europe, range from ‘Christendom’ to membership of bodies: from the European Coal and Steel Community to the European Union. European identity is associated with capitalism, rather than a command economy, democracy rather than dictatorship, and the state provision of welfare services.

Europe remains powerful yet ill-defined. Some of its members—Russia and Turkey—extend beyond its accepted geographical limits. Such unity as it possessed by the early twentieth century rested equivocally upon a shared though divisive Christianity and a rationalist philosophical and scientific tradition (both owing much to the Arab world), a common history of sustained internecine warfare, a fiction of racial homogeneity, and an original responsibility for industrialization and modernity. This tense unity was first effectively projected beyond its own boundaries in the sixteenth century, reaching its greatest extent in the early twentieth century before dissolving in the great European civil wars of 1914-45. Its greatest continuing vulnerabilities are to nostalgia and racism. See also European Union.

— Charles Jones

For more information on Europe, visit Britannica.com.

The continent of Europe was said to have been named from the mythical Europa, although Herodotus (4. 45) found this implausible since she was from Phoenicia and never entered mainland Europe. The name as used by the ancients does not correspond with the modern continent. Not mentioned by Homer, it is first found in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (seventh century BC) where it is an unspecified area (around Greece) distinct from the Peloponnese and the Greek islands. Herodotus and his contemporaries in the mid-fifth century BC considered the whole of the known earth as one continent divided into three main parts, Asia, Libya, and Europe. The last was naturally bounded by the Mediterranean and the Atlantic; its western boundary was signified by the Pillars of Hercules (the Straits of Gibraltar) beyond which the Greeks rarely penetrated, while in the east Europe was divided from Asia first by the river Phasis (modern Rioni) which flows to the eastern shore of the Black Sea, and later by the Tanais (modern Don). The northern boundary was the mountain-chain which runs north of Thrace, Italy, and Spain. The Greeks hardly explored beyond south Russia; central and northern Russia and Scandinavia were unknown and fabulous regions. The land exploration of Europe was chiefly accomplished in the first centuries BC and AD by the Roman army surveyors under Julius Caesar and the generals of the emperor Augustus.

Literary periodical created in 1923 by a group round Romain Rolland. Its editors have included Guéhenno and Cassou.

European interest in Buddhism first began to develop during the colonial period. The earliest Buddhist texts to be studied in Europe were Mahāyāna Sanskrit manuscripts collected in Nepal by the British Resident, B. H. Hodgson. Another British civil servant who made an outstanding contribution to the study of Theravāda Buddhism was T. W. Rhys Davids (1843-1922). Rhys Davids became interested in Buddhism during his residence in Sri Lanka and went on to found the Pāli Text Society in 1881. The Society, based in Oxford, England, remains to this day the most important outlet for the publication of texts and translations of Pāli Buddhist literature. Professional scholars from many European countries played an important role in the transmission of Buddhism to the West. In 1845 the Frenchman Eugène Burnouf published his Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism and followed this seven years later with a translation of the Lotus Sūtra. Interest in Buddhism in Germany was stimulated by the publication of Herman Oldenberg's The Buddha, his Life, his Doctrine, his Community in 1881. The great Belgian scholars Louis de la Vallée Poussin and (later) Étienne Lamotte also made an enormous contribution through their work with Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese sources. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was the first major Western thinker to take an interest in Buddhism. Due to the absence of reliable sources, Schopenhauer had only an imperfect knowledge of Buddhism, and saw it as confirming his own somewhat pessimistic philosophy. Of all the world religions Buddhism seemed to him the most rational and ethically evolved, and the frequent references to Buddhism in his writings brought it to the attention of Western intellectuals in the latter part of the 19th century. In England, Sir Edwin Arnold (1832-1904) published his famous poem The Light of Asia in 1879. The poem describes the life and teachings of the Buddha in a melodramatic style. The German novelist Herman Hesse often alluded to Buddhist themes in his writings, notably in his 1922 novel Siddhartha which has been translated into many languages (the eponymous protagonist of the novel is not Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha).

In more recent times, immigration has influenced the situation of Buddhism in Europe, although not to the degree it has done in the USA. Although the United Kingdom has received large numbers of Asian immigrants these have come mainly from the Indian subcontinent and are mostly Hindus or Muslims. There are some 19,000 refugees from Indochina in Britain, 22,000 in Germany, and 97,000 in France. The majority of Buddhists in Europe are Caucasians who have converted to Buddhism rather than immigrants who brought their beliefs with them. Although accurate numbers are difficult to come by, in the UK there are around 100 Tibetan centres, about 90 Theravāda centres, and some 40 zen centres, together with a further 100 or so other groups including the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. As in north America, converts to Buddhism come predominantly from the middle classes. The increase in the popularity of Buddhism has been notable although less spectacular than in north America. Estimates suggest there are over a million Buddhists in Europe, with about 200,000 in the UK and an equivalent number in France.

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Continent that is actually a vast peninsula of Eurasia.