Resemblance or Influence? George Smith, W.A. Cornaby, and the Comparison Between Guanyin-Virgin Mary
Abstract
This paper examines how British missionaries George Smith and W. A. Cornaby interpreted the resemblance between the Buddhist bodhisattva Guanyin and the Christian Virgin Mary figure in nineteenth and early twentieth-century China. Rather than asking whether the two religious images were historically connected, this paper focuses on how missionaries used Christian interpretive frameworks in order to explain their resemblance. Through close readings of Smith's A Narrative of an Exploratory Visit (1847) and Cornaby's The Call of Cathay (1910) publications, this paper argues that the two missionaries share similar visual evidence yet different historical meanings. Smith recognized the parallels between Buddhism and Christianity but separated religious resemblance from historical causation, while Cornaby treated resemblance as evidence of earlier Christian influence on Buddhism. This comparison shows that missionary writings did not simply record religious similarities. Instead, missionaries actively produced historical explanations by deciding what counted as evidence, how religious influence moved in an unfamiliar region, and what kinds of historical relationships were produced between religions.
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