kitigawa, the making of history of religions

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The Making of a Historian of ReligionsJ O S E P H M . K I T A G A W A

A NY attempt to reflect on the state of the history of religions (Religions-I \ ivissenschaft) in America might profitably begin with a candid_ / \_reco gnitio n of its strange popularity in our time. Colleges anduniversities are offering an increasing number of courses to meet the growingenrollment in this field, and publishers are frantic in their search for newauthors and new textbooks to capitalize on the current trends. As far as Ican remember, the situation was vastly different twenty years ago when a

handful of us studied the his tory of religions under the late Joachim W ac hat the Unive rsity of Chicago. W e struggled then without the benefit of hand-some fellowships or opportunities to study abroad, and our professionalfuture did not look promising at all. Understandably, in those days the fielddid not attract many students. Today, we receive more applicants than wecan responsibly handle in the discipline, even though our resources are muchgreater now than two decades ago.It is significant to note, however, that many of those who wish to studythe history of religions today are rebelling against their own religious tradi-

tions in one way or another, and not a few are looking for what amounts toa kind of new religion. Some are motivated by misguided enthusiasm for asubject matter that appears to be exotic and alluring. Only a small number ofapplicants seem to have even a vague notion of what the history of religionsis all about. All in all, there seems to be a rather widespread ambiguity aboutthe nature of the discipline in spite of, or because of, its popularity. Theambiguity is no less apparent among those who are teaching the subject today.W e can cite many reasons for th is, of course. For instance, in the days whe nthe current professors were doing their graduate work, opportunities to studythe history of religions were rather limited. In fact, a number of the present-day teachers had their academic training in some other field, and while manyof them have acquired competence in this area more or less by their owninitiative, some have not moved beyond the level of interested amateurs.Besides, the fact that many professors are expected to teach courses in twoor three different areas does not allow them to devote an adequate amountof time and energy to scholarly pursuit in the field. Although the picture hasimproved greatly in this respect during the past few years, some collegeadministrators who write to us nowadays asking for new instructors in thearea still show an amazing lack of understanding of the nature of the discipline

JOSEPH M. KITAGAWA is Professor of the History of Religions in the Universityof Chicago. The present article is based on a paper read before the Annual Meeting of theAmerican Academy of Religion in Chicago, October 19-22, 1967.11968, by American Academy of Religion


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1 9 2 JOSEPH M . KITAGAWA

itself. It is not surprising, therefore, that the recent survey conducted by theHistory of Religions Committee of the American Council of Learned Soci-eties regarding the proposed program of the scholar-in-residence revealedonce again the ambiguity that haunts the subject.It is a matter of utmost irony that practically every institution is in favorof teaching some phases of the history of religions, but many do not knowexactly what it is or what to do with it in practice. In many cases, coursesin the field are administered by departments of religion, while in others theyare taught in conjunction w ith studies of Asian cu ltures, philosophies, societies,and civilizations. In a number of situations, professors in religion departmentsand those in Asian studies collaborate in designing and teaching courses inthe history of religions. I do not question the academic or practical rationale,

necessity, and even advantage, of each of these arrangements. Nor do I denythe fact that the history of religions derives much of its data from the religionsof Asia and Africa as well as from the so-called primitive religions. Indeed,many leading historians of religions have made notable contributions to thestudy of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and primitive religions. I am, however,somewhat uneasy about the tacit assumption prevalent today that the historyof religions is nothing but an inquiry into non-Western and non-Judeo-Christian faiths. This assumption becomes all the more ironic when it ispointed out that the checkered background of our discipline in the UnitedStates before World War II, as well as the current enthusiasm in many seg-ments of the academic community and the dormant suspicion in some circlestoward it, might have arisen from an oversimplified identification of thediscipline solely with the subject matter of non-Western and non-Judeo-Christian religions.

IN RETROSPECT1. Since this is not the occasion to recount the well-known history ofthe religious and cultural heritage of America, it is probably sufficient tomention that the Protestant tradition, which for so long dominated the main-stream of American religious life, inherited a large amount of pietism fromEurope. This accounts for the strong evangelistic temper and enduring bibli-cism, couched in moralistic tones, of American Protestantism. While it maybe too simple to explain awa y the tension b etw een the social gospel and funda-mentalism, or betwe en liberalism and neo-o rthodox y, in terms of the persistentpietist strand and the reaction against it, it is nevertheless true that AmericanProtestantism, true to its fideist principle, has never questioned the superiority

of the Christian revelation to other religions, the gospel (kerygma) to eccle-siastical tradition, and faith to understanding. In the course of time, the reli-gious character of America came to be modified by the coming of large num-bers of Catholics and Jews. However, both Roman Catholicism and Judaism,as much as Protestantism, were primarily concerned with their own internalaffairs, and did not exert significant scholarly influence on institutions ofhigher learning except in denominational institutions.


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THE MAKING OF A HISTORIAN OF RELIGIONS 1 9 3

This does not imply, of course, that the religious groups in Americawere deprived of scholarship. Earlier, Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant semi-naries either sent men to Europe for training or imported scholars fromabroad. In more recent decades the divinity schools of the major privateuniversities and the interdenominational theological seminaries have de-veloped high-level scholarship, and have in turn helped to raise the scholarlystandards of denominational seminaries. However, in all of them, seriousstudy of other religions was not stressed. In the main, American religiousgroups sharply divided religions into two levels or categories: "their own"versus all others. From time to time they showed a great deal of interest inthe teachings and practices of other religions of the world, motivated eitherby humanitarian or apologetic interests as reflected in a number of intro-ductory courses on comparative religion in the seminaries and sectarian col-leges. These latter courses, with some notable exceptions to be sure, eithersentimentalized the differences among diverse religions or indulged in a su-perficial cataloguing of the main tenets of various religious systems, oftenwith an implicit or explicit attempt to demonstrate the superiority of theJudeo-Christian tradition. Hence, even when critical insights were appliedto the study of other religions, the sanctity of their own was carefully safe-guarded. In short, American religious scholarship, which took seriously theEuropean tradition of hermeneutics, especially in biblical studies, achievedpractically no resonance with the heremeneutical tradition developed in thearea of Religionsivissensckaft.1

2. In sharp contrast with the mainstream of American religious tradition,the humanistic intellectual tradition in America has always shown keen in-terest in, or rather curiosity about, the religions and cultures of Asia. Theimpetus for such interest in Oriental subjects, coupled with either mild orstrong antipathy toward the traditional Western religious systems, no doubtcame originally from Europ e. W e might recall that the vogue of Chinesephilosophy and Indian religions, which had captured the imagination of manyEuropean intellectuals from the time of the Enlightenment, had direct influ-ence upon elite circles on the New Continent, so that a number of talentedwriters and artists, e. g., Em erson, Th orea u, La F arge, and He nr y Adam s,idealized and romanticized the "spiritual East." The fact that Edwin Arnold'sLight of Asia, published in 1879 in England, soon went into eight editions inAmerica indicates the widespread influence, however superficial, of Indianreligion and Buddhism on the American reading public in the latter half ofthe last century.2 In such an atmosphere, the Parliament of World Religions,held in Chicago in 1893, much to the delight of humanistic intellectuals andsome liberal Christians and Jews, generated enthusiasm for Eastern religions

1 For a fuller discussion of this problem, see Philip H. Ashby, "The History of Reli-gions," in Paul Ramsey, ed., Religion, Englewood Cliffs, N . J. : Pren tice-Hall, 1965, pp. 1-49.1 See Arthur E. Christy, "The Sense of the Past," in Christy, ed., The Asian Legacyand American Life, New York: The John Day Co., 1942, pp. 1-55.


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1 94 JOSEPH M . KITAGAWAand philosophies. It is said that the establishment of many chairs of Orientalphilosophy and comparative religion in the United States was occasioned bythe Parliament. Probably the statement of purpose for the initiating of theHarvard Oriental Series indicates the mood of the time. It says, in part:The central point of interest in the history of India is the long development of the religiousthought and life of the Hindus, a race akin, by ties of blood and language, to the Anglo-Saxon stock. The value of the study of non-Christian religions is coming to be recognizedby the best friends of Christianity more and more every day. The study tends to broadenand strengthen and universalize the base of religion, a result of practical and immediatebenefit. Works which promote this study stand first in the plans of the Oriental Series; andthey are essentially timely now, when so much of the widespread interest in Buddhism andother Oriental systems is misdirected by half-knowledge, or by downright error concerningthem.3

Notwithstanding the optimism of the above statement, the serious human-istic study of religions did not take root in American soil until recent years,except to a limited extent in the philosophy of religion and the study of lan-guages. Significantly, many humanists also took it for granted that the reli-gions of the world were to be divided into two levels or categories, onlywith the order reversed from that held by the pietist tradition. In this con-nection, the late D . T . Suzuki once spoke of how t he free-lance philosopherPaul Carus and his father-in-law E. C. Hegeler, who invited him to come toAmerica in 1897, regarded religions, especially Christianity and Buddhism.In Suzuki's words, "they believed that religion must stand on scientific foun-dations, and they thought that Christianity was based too much on mythol-ogy . . . . W h a t impressed D r. Carus and M r. H egeler about Buddhism wasthe fact that Buddhism was singularly free from such mythological elements.For example, in contrast with Christianity, which accepts Christ as God-man, Buddhism regards Buddha as a human being. In a sense, Buddhism maybe regarded as rationalistic and p ositiv istic.. . ." 4 Such an assumption, or Ishould say affirmation, about the nature of religion, however congenial itmay have been to a certain philosophical temperament, was not conduciveto the development of a well-balanced inquiry into the full range of Easternreligions, to say nothing of the study of the Judeo-Christian tradition andIslam. And yet, an amazing number of self-styled experts on Oriental reli-gions have never questioned the validity of such an assumption or its varia-tions, which are as one-sided and biased as is the Ch ristian or Jew ish apolog ist'sapproach to the study of religions. It is also to be noted that the Americanhumanists' incurable romanticism vis-a-vis the religions of far-off lands hadneither the benefit of edifying support nor such scholarly correctives as

1 Quoted in Henry Clarke Warren, Buddhism in Translation, Harvard Oriental Series,Vol. Ill, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1896, p. 388.* Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, "Introduction: A Glimpse of Paul Carus," in J. M. Kita-gawa, ed., Modern Trends in World Religions, La Salle, Illinois: T he Open C ourt PublishingCo., 1959, p. x.


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might have come from the disciplines of Indology, Buddhology, Sinology,and Islamics. Th ese w ere ha rdly know n in America par tly because th eUnited States, unlike European colonial nations, had no political incentive toencourage serious Asian and African studies until W or ld W a r II . Me an-while, many Americans, under the spell of residual isolationism, religiousprejudice, and racial bigotry, came to view Oriental religions and culturesas esoteric subjects that concerned only a tiny group of ivory-tower Orien-talists, missionaries to the "heathen" lands, or talented crackpots. All this,howev er, changed ma rkedly after the W a r .RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

Much has been written about the new mood that has penetrated the reli-gious and intellectual outlook in America since the end ofN Wor ld Wa r I I .While we need not labor over the many internal and external factors thathave together brought about significant changes in our time, we should referto tw o m atters of direct bearing upon the discipline of the history of religions:the expansion of non-Western studies, and the proliferation of departmentsof religion, especially in state universities.1. It goes witho ut saying that W o rld W a r II marked a decisive turningpoint in the development of Asian studies in the United States. Before the

War, American education, which was almost completely devoted to thestudy of the Western tradition, produced educated citizens who knew prac-tically nothing about the non-Western world. As Meribeth E. Camerononce quipped, "few Americans could name any Asiatics except Confucius,Gandhi, and Chiang Kai-shek." But with the outbreak of hostilities, the na-tional emergency required training programs in Asian subjects, and thereappeared an amazing array of books and articles on Asia, from the veryscholarly to the ridiculous. "Overnight the few experts on the Far East whohad been clinging to the fringes of American academic life became nationalassets. Audiences were eager to hear about Asia, conferences of specialistsand laymen multiplied, and the academic world was edified by the spectacleof college administrators eager to inaugurate courses on the Far East at thevery moment at which many of those best qualified to give them were beingcalled into the armed forces or into government employment."6 Further, thenewly-aroused A merican interest in Asia did not diminish whe n the W a rended. It grew even more in the post-war period, as testified by the steadyincrease in Asian and other non-Western studies at various universities, andthe phenomenal growth of the Association of Asian Studies. 6

M an y educators and intellectuals heirs of the humanistic tradition in6 Meribeth E. Cameron, "Far Eastern Studies in the U.S.," The Far Eastern Quarterly,VII, 2 (February, 1948), 119-20.8 In this article I discuss Asian studies primarily, although similar observations mightbe made of other non-Western studies.


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America remain critical, and with some justification, of hastily improvisedcourses on Asian subjects or lament the practice of devoting a large part ofcollege education to the study of non-Western civilizations. As late as 1951,the former chancellor of the University of Chicago, in his preface to theGreat Books Series, went so far as to say: "The pretense that we are nowprepared within the educational system to include understanding the East asone main pivot in a liberal curriculum will obstruct, not assist, the solutionof the central problem of producing a liberally educated generation." Whileacknowledging the eventual necessity of learning about non-Western tradi-tions, he went on to say: "at the moment we have all we can do to understandourselves in order to be prepared for the forthcoming meeting between Eastand W e s t . . . . T h e time for that w ill come when w e have understood ourown tradition well enough to understand another."

7In a sense, the vogue inAsian subjects sweeping the country today may be seen as a form of rebellionamong present-day intellectuals against the hitherto accepted notion that thebusiness of the American university is to teach primarily, if not completely,the intellectual and cultural tradition of the West, with the assumption thatonly when Americans have understood the Western tradition well enough,can they begin to understand another tradition. It is equally significant thatcurrent non-Western studies in America are no longer the monopoly of afew Orientalists or scholars of the humanities. An increasing number of

disciplines in the social sciences are involved in non-Western subjects. 8 Andin the name of interdisciplinary cooperation, the scholar of the history ofreligions is often welcomed or wooed to serve as the expert on religion inthe program of non-Western studies.2. Little needs to be said concerning the proliferation of departments ofreligion in various institutions. From all indications it seems clear that suchquestions as whether or not it is possible or desirable to provide courses inreligion, and whether or not religion study is an essential ingredient of human-istic education, have been settled affirmatively in the minds of ma ny e duc ator s.

However, we have a long way to go before coming to terms with equallydifficult questions respecting the nature of the curriculum, the relation of reli-gion studies to other disciplines of the university, and the quality and qualifi-cations of the faculty.However, some serious efforts are being made to grapple with theseproblems. Already, many departments of religion have formulated and ex-perimented with curricula in very creative ways, with the result that theirstudents receive better training than did their own teachers. Many presentteachers are fully aware that their own training, either in interdenominational

7 Rober t Maynard Hutch ins , The Great Conversation, in Great Books of the WesternWorld, Vol. I, Ch icago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1951, pp. 72-3 (my italics).8 See Felix M. Keesing, "Problems of Integrating Humanities and Social Science Ap-proaches in Far Eastern Studies," The Far Eastern Quarterly, XIV, 2 (February, 1955), 161-8 .


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1 9 8 JOSEPH M. KITAGAWA

well-trained Islamicists, Buddhologists, and specialists in other religions arenot too plentiful. Also , even for them it is not easy within the fram ework ofcurrent non-Western studies to present the totality of human life in Islamic,Buddhist, or any other religious terms. In this situation, while the historianof religions, to the extent that he has done specialized research in one religioustradition, may contribute something to the study of specific non-Westernreligions, he will be greatly frustrated if he wishes to bring to bear the basicthrust of the methodology and outlook of the history of religions.

It seems to me that another kind of academic myopia is operating in theminds of many w ho are engaged in programs of religion studies in a u niversitysetting. It is probably a logical necessity for those who advocate the inter-faith approach in religion studies to take seriously what adherents of otherreligious traditions believe. It may be granted that ultimately this is the cen-tral question in our attempt to understand various religions. But it is neitherfeasible nor desirable, even with the best of intentions, to compromise thislofty goal by attem pting to have a perpetual interfaith conference in the class-room. Thus, visits to the class by a local swami or travelling Zen masterbecome "highlights" of the course, with the result that the teacher of thehistory of religions tends, in effect, to be relegated to the status of a poorsubstitute for "Mr. Hindu" or "Mr. Buddhist." Here again there seems tobe a great discrepancy between what the historian of religions is expected toteach and what his scholarly objectives demand. On the other hand, thosewho are concerned with the study of religions as a humanistic discipline oftentake the easy way out by polarizing the religious subjects into Western andEastern, motivated by practical necessity or some other consideration. Ac-cordingly, the historian of religions is expected to stay in the corner of theEastern religions exclusively.I am not primarily criticizing the fact that the historian of religions mustcarry the impossible burden of posing one day as an expert on the doctrines,history, ethics, and cults of Hinduism, and the next day as an expert on allaspects of Islam and so on, while his colleagues have more manageable re-sponsibilities, such as the biblical literature, the development of the Americanreligious heritage, or contemporary religious thought. What I am lamentingis the fact that the discipline of the history of religions is, by practical neces-sity, interpreted solely as the teaching of non-Western religions. In the main,very little effort has been made to reassess the total endeavor in religionstudies, taking seriously the insights and concerns of the history of religions.For the most part, it is business as usual as far as the department of religionis concerned, with a heavy dose of Judeo-Ch ristian studies, even though thereare now added a few glamorous courses with pretentious titles such as WorldReligions, Asian Religions, Eastern Mysticism, and Zen, to satisfy the curi-osity of the intellectual hippies. Only in rare cases is the program of religionstudies designed to relate, even superficially, all religions, Western as wellas Eastern, to the total historical and religious experience of the human race.


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T H E MAKING OF A HISTORIAN OF RELIGIONSUnfortunately, there is no alchemy that can quickly overcome the aca-

demic myopia. Even the magic of curriculum change, which many adminis-tra tor s invoke as the cure of all evils, cannot solve overnight th e basic problemsof the history of religions. In reality, the problem is not a shortage of coursesin the field or even of teachers able or willing to teach them . Th er e ar e courses,but they are often misconceived and inadequately taught. Douglas Hortononce remarked that "in general, a community is not better than its churches;in general, a church is not better than its minister; and in general, a ministeris not better than his training." A similar observation may be applied to thehistorian of religions. In short, those in the field are keenly aware that well-trained historians of religions are not many, and good training programs inthe field are few.In this respect, I am happ y to n ote tha t our first cousins Islamicists,Indologists, Buddhologists, or specialists on Chinese, Japanese, and primitivereligions have fared better in recent years. While I have no direct knowl-edge of the inner workings of such programs as the Institute of Islamic Studiesat McGill University, graduate programs in Buddhist studies at the Univer-sities of Wisconsin and Washington, and similar study centers on Hinduismand other religions in various universities, all these seem to have well-structured programs in terms of research, training, teaching, and publications,thanks to generous subsidies from foundations, the government, their owninstitutions, and private individuals. I certainly hope that those who aspireto go into the history of religions will take full advantage of the resourcesnow available for linguistic training and in the historical, sociological, andcultural studies that are pertinent to the understanding of various religions.W e must, however, be crystal clear concerning the basic distinction be-tween the stu dy of specific religions and the history of religions. W e are allaware, of course, that in the popular mind the history of religions is oftenthought of as a convenient semantic umbrella that covers all the independentstudies of specific religions. But the objective of the history of religions(Religimswissenschaft), in the technical sense in which we use this term, mustbe nothing short of scholarly inquiry into the nature and structure of the reli-gious experience of the human race and its diverse manifestations in history.This means, for example, that unlike the Islamicist and Buddhologist, whostudy Islam and Buddhism, respectively, as their main objectives, the his-torian of religions concerns himself with the study of these and other religionsbecause they are integral parts of the religious history of mankind. Whilethe objectives of both approaches are legitimate and closely interr elated ,their differences should not be overlooked.

Obviously, it is humanly impossible for the historian of religions to studyall the religions of the world, past and present, with equal intensity. In prac-tice, he has to depend on th e researches of exp erts in various specific religio ns.At the same time, it is necessary for him to be technically competent in schol-


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arly research in at least one or two religions, because this enables him tounderstand in depth, as much as scholarly inquiry can make possible, thenature, structure, and history of these particular religious traditions in con-crete form, and also because without such specific competence he cannot evenbegin to appreciate the scholarly researches of all other religions. Of equalimportance are the genuine cooperative inquiry and mutual checking thatbenefit alike the historian of religions and experts in specific religions regard-ing researches in areas of common concern.There is another dimension of the task, a dimension that constitutes theunique contribution of the history of religions to other disciplines concernedwith religion studies. I refer to the articulation of the nature, structure, and

meaning of man's religious experience, an articulation based on historicaland system atic inqu iry into concrete religious configurations past andpresent, primitive and historic, and Eastern and Western. Granted that thehermeneutical task of the history of religions has been greatly influenced andenriched by the contributions of normative and empirical studies of religions,in the final analysis it is only the historian of religions who must carry theawesome burden of articulating what Joachim Wach termed the "integralunderstanding" of religious phenomena, as required by the discipline of thehistory of religions. This is probably the most controversial aspect of ourdiscipline in the sense that "integral understanding" involves selectivity ofdata and a telescoping of the long and complex historical development ofman's religions. The lack of data is not at all our problem. Our real problem,to use a phrase of G. van der Leeuw, is that the manner in which the dataare "significantly organized" inevitably varies according to the personalsensitivity, religious outlook, and scholarly training of the individual historianof religions. This is one reason why I for one hesitate to use the Englishtranslation of the term, Religionsivissenschaft, since the ve ry nature of "integ ralunderstanding" defies precise "scientific" verification in the sense that theEnglish word "science" implies (although I am not altogether happy withthe expression, the "history of religions," either).This does not imply that the history of religions possesses no coherenceas a discipline or that there is no systematic way of training people in thefield. Indeed, it is possible for us to provide a fairly solid body of knowledgeand important categories as well as viable methodological principles, so thatupon completing their doctoral programs our graduates can offer relevantcourses effectively either on an elementary level or on a more advanced level,and either within the context of a department of religion or in a program ofnon-Western studies. However, while graduate training in this field cantrain competent teachers, it cannot necessarily and automatically make crea-tive historians of religions out of them. The bitter truth is that creative schol-ars, like great artists, are not easily found. It is fairly certain that not tooma ny of the large number of toda y's applicants will remain as creative scholars.Of course, some truly great potential historians of religions may be tucked


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away, hidden from all of us at the moment, and there are no doubt men whocan rightly be classified as geniuses. But more often than not creativity inscholarship comes not from a sudden flash of insight but from many years ofdisciplined and dedicated work, permeated by an awareness of the significanceof what one is wrestling with and stimulated by the serious researches ofother historians of religions and sch olars in re lated disciplines providedof course that one has had the benefit of a fairly good academic training. 11I am not suggesting that the path of the historian of religions is moredifficult than that of scholars in other disciplines. I am, however, keenlyaware of the peculiar temptations that confront the historian of religionstoday because of the popularity of the discipline coupled with the ambiguitythat envelops it. It takes a considerable amount of determination for a his-torian of religions in-the-making to work toward creative scholarship withoutsuccumbing to the temptation to produce instant relevance either as a pseudo-Or ienta list or a quasi-theologian especially now t hat the histo ry of reli-gions has become a "favorite" addition either to programs of non-Westernstudies or depa rtmen ts of religion. Also, people in various quarters w iththe b est of intentions, to be sure tr y to lure us into becoming spokesm enfor the brotherhood of man, world peace, and intercultural and interfaithunderstanding. These are all important objectives. They must concern all ofus. And it m ay be true that historians of religions with their particular know l-edge might be sensitive to these worthy causes as by-products of their schol-arly work. However, in the spirit of John Henry Newman, who held thatthe object of a university is intellectual and not moral, we must be clear inour own minds that the primary object of the history of religions is the schol-arly task of "integral understanding" of the structure and meaning of man'sreligious history, in elucidation of the fact that in order to be really humanin every culture and every phase of history, man has always seen the totalaspect of existence in relation to sacral reality.

In that perceptive and satirical poem, "A Ballad of Artistic Integrity,"E. B. White recounts an imagined conversation between one of the Rocke-fellers and Diego Rivera, who was commissioned to paint the mural for thelobby of the RCA Building. The poem starts with a series of questions ad-dressed to Rivera, such as, "What do you paint?," "Will there be any doves,or a tree in fall? Or a hunting scene, like an English hall?" The artist simplyreplies, "I paint what I see." To another series of further queries, he says:"I paint what I paint." After a third round of questions concerning the sig-nificance of the mural's theme, Rivera answers, "I paint what I think."

11 The creativity that comes as a result of long and hard work is seen in the fact thatit took Felix Mendelssohn three years to complete his Symphony No. 4, A Major, Italian.When he finished it, he wrote: "My work, about which I had recently many doubts, isfinished; and now when I look it over . . . I feel that it shows progress, and that is the mainpoint. . . ." Likewise, progress in scholarship is probably not possible without some agoniz-ing experiences along the road.


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202 JOSEPH M. KITAGAWA"I paint what I paint, I paint what I see,I paint what I think," said Rivera,"And the thing that is dearest in life to me. . . is Integrity."1*

In this day of religious confusion and academic myopia, we need more his-torians of religions who can honestly and courageously say:

I write what I write, I write what I see,I write what I think.And the thing that is dearest in life to me isscholarly integrity.

11 Quoted in The New York Times Magazine, April, 1967, p. 30.

kitigawa, the making of history of religions

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