¹ Hedda Hopper, “Metro to Film Life of Gautama Buddha,” Los Angeles Times, December 24, 1954, 9.

² In particular, Truman and Eisenhower's administrations highlighted a Christian basis for the United States to differentiate American democracy from communism. See Inboden, William, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945–1960: The Soul of Containment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Herzog, Jonathan P., The Spiritual-Industrial Complex: America's Religious Battle against Communism in the Early Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Grimshaw, Mike, “Encountering Religion: Encounter, Religion, and the Cultural Cold War, 1953–1967,” History of Religions 51, no. 1 (2011): 31–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gunn, Jeremy, Spiritual Weapons: The Cold War and the Forging of an American National Religion (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008)Google Scholar; Hill, Patricia R., “Commentary: Religion as a Category of Diplomatic Analysis,” Diplomatic History 24, no. 4 (2000): 633–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kirby, Dianne, “Christian Anti-Communism,” Twentieth Century Communism 7, no. 7 (2014): 126–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dianne Kirby, “The Religious Cold War,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War, ed. Richard H. Immerman and Petra Goedde (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199236961.013.0031; Philip E. Muehlenbeck, Religion and the Cold War: A Global Perspective (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012); Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York: Knopf, 2012); Andrew Preston, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945–1960: The Soul of Containment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); and David E. Settje, Faith and War: How Christians Debated the Cold and Vietnam Wars (New York: New York University Press, 2011).

³ Kirby, “The Religious Cold War,” 2; “NSC 5612,” September 5, 1956, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, East Asian Security; Cambodia; Laos, Volume XXI, Dept. of State—Office of the Historian, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1955-57v21/d119; “‘Proposal Regarding America's Relations with Therawada Buddhist Nations’ (appended to Memorandum of Meeting: Committee on Buddhism),” May 31, 1956, OCB 000.3 [Religion] (file #1) OCB Central Files Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas.

⁴ Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York: New Press, 2013), 2.

⁵ See, for example, Sarah Miller Harris, The CIA and the Congress for Cultural Freedom in the Early Cold War: The Limits of Making Common Cause (New York: Routledge, 2016), https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315669847; Giles Scott-Smith and Hans Krabbendam, The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe, 1945–1960, Cass Series—Studies in Intelligence (Portland, OR: F Cass, 2003); and Giles Scott-Smith, Campaigning Culture and the Global Cold War: The Journals of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2017), https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59867-7.

⁶ Eugene Ford, Cold War Monks: Buddhism and America's Secret Strategy in Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017); Patrice Ladwig, “‘Special Operation Pagoda’: Buddhism, Covert Operations, and the Politics of Religious Subversion in Cold-War Laos (1957–60),” in Changing Lives in Laos: Society, Politics, and Culture in a Post-Socialist State, ed. Vanina Bouté and Vatthana Pholsena (Singapore: NUS Press, 2017); Tony Day and Maya H. T. Liem, Cultures at War: The Cold War and Cultural Expression in Southeast Asia, Studies on Southeast Asia, no. 51 (Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2010); Marc Frey, “Tools of Empire: Persuasion and the United States’ Modernizing Mission in Southeast Asia,” Diplomatic History 27, no. 4 (September 2003): 543–68; Muan, Ingrid, “Playing with Powers: The Politics of Art in Newly Independent Cambodia,” Udaya: Journal of Khmer Studies 6 (2005): 41–56Google Scholar.

⁷ Saunders, The Cultural Cold War; Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); Tony Shaw, Cinematic Cold War: The American and Soviet Struggle for Hearts and Minds (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010); Daniel J. Leab, Orwell Subverted: The CIA and the Filming of Animal Farm (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007); Charles K. Armstrong, “Foundations of Free Asia: Robert Blum, the Asia Foundation and the Cultural Cold War (Revised)” (unpublished manuscript, 2017); Armstrong, Charles K., “The Cultural Cold War in Korea, 1945–1950,” Journal of Asian Studies 62, no. 1 (2003): 71–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar, https://doi.org/10.2307/3096136; Christina Klein, Cold War Cosmopolitanism: Period Style and Public Culture in 1950s Korean Cinema (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020); Sangjoon Lee, “The Asia Foundation's Motion-Picture Project and the Cultural Cold War in Asia,” Film History: An International Journal 29, no. 2 (July 22, 2017): 108–37; Lee, Sangjoon, “Creating an Anti-Communist Motion Picture Producers’ Network in Asia: The Asia Foundation, Asia Pictures, and the Korean Motion Picture Cultural Association,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 37, no. 3 (July 3, 2017): 517–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, https://doi.org/10.1080/01439685.2016.1157292.

⁸ In 1942, Mackinder outlined how U.S. strategists should dominate the post–World War II world in an article in Foreign Affairs: “If the Soviet Union emerges from this war as the conqueror of Germany, she must rank as the greatest land power on the globe . . . the power in the strategically strongest defensive position. The Heartland is the greatest natural fortress on earth.” See Mackinder, Sir Halford J, “The Round World and the Winning of the Peace,” Foreign Affairs 21, no. 1 (1942): 595Google Scholar.

⁹ “Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949, Eastern Europe; The Soviet Union, Volume V—Office of the Historian,” September 2, 1952, CIA-RDP79T01146A001200170001-1, General CIA Records—CREST, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp79t01146a001200170001-1.

¹⁰ Geoffrey Roberts, “Averting Armageddon: The Communist Peace Movement, 1948–1956,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism, ed. Stephen A. Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 3, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199602056.013.018; Vladimir Dobrenko, “Conspiracy of Peace: The Cold War, the International Peace Movement, and the Soviet Peace Campaign, 1946–1956” (PhD diss., London School of Economics and Political Science at the University of London, 2016), 63–65.

¹¹ Petra Goedde, The Politics of Peace: A Global Cold War History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 1.

¹² “Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949, Eastern Europe; The Soviet Union, Volume V—Office of the Historian.”

¹³ Dobrenko, “Conspiracy of Peace,” 63–65.

¹⁴ Roberts, “Averting Armageddon,” 4; Alessandro Brogi, Confronting America: The Cold War between the United States and the Communists in France and Italy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 122–23.

¹⁵ “A Report to the National Security Council—NSC 68,” April 12, 1950, https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/research-files/report-national-security-council-nsc-68.

¹⁶ On April 29, 1950, the People's Daily printed an announcement of the “Committee of the Chinese Council for the Protection of World Peace” that stated that “the Standing Committee of the World Peace Council calls upon the peace-loving people of the whole world to sign an appeal demanding the ban of atomic war.” Forster, Elisabeth, “Bellicose Peace: China's Peace Signature Campaign and Discourses about ‘Peace’ in the Early 1950s,” Modern China 46, no. 3 (2020): 254CrossRefGoogle Scholar, https://doi.org/10.1177/0097700419851460.

¹⁷ “Soviet Intelligence Organization and Functions of the Ministry of State (M G B),” June 1, 1948, General CIA Records—CREST, CIA FOIA (foia.cia.gov), https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/6r000100130001-3.

¹⁸ Johnston, Timothy, “Peace or Pacifism? The Soviet ‘Struggle for Peace in All the World’, 1948–54,” The Slavonic and East European Review 86, no. 2 (2008): 261–62Google Scholar; Wernicke, Günter, “The Communist-Led World Peace Council and the Western Peace Movements: The Fetters of Bipolarity and Some Attempts to Break Them in the Fifties and Early Sixties,” Peace and Change 23, no. 3 (1998): 265–311CrossRefGoogle Scholar, https://doi.org/10.1111/0149-0508.00087; Roberts, “Averting Armageddon,” 16.

¹⁹ Harry Truman, United States Department of State Office of Public Communication and United States Department of State, “Going Forward with a Campaign of Truth,” The Department of State Bulletin 22, no. 565, May 1, 1950, 669–71.

²⁰ Truman, “Going Forward with a Campaign of Truth.”

²¹ Medhurst, Martin J., “Eisenhower and the Crusade for Freedom: The Rhetorical Origins of a Cold War Campaign,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 27, no. 4 (1997): 646–61Google Scholar; Gary D. Rawnsley, ed., Cold-War Propaganda in the 1950s (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), eBook; Mark J. Rozell and Gleaves Whitney, eds., Religion and the American Presidency, 3d ed. (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), eBook, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bu/detail.action?docID=5056792; Lucas, Scott, “Campaigns of Truth: The Psychological Strategy Board and American Ideology, 1951–1953,” The International History Review 18, no. 2 (1996): 279–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar, https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.1996.9640744; Richard H. Cummings, Radio Free Europe's “Crusade for Freedom”: Rallying Americans behind Cold War Broadcasting, 1950–1960 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2010).

²² “Statement by the President, Truman on Korea, June 27, 1950” (n.d.), Public Papers of the Presidents, Harry S. Truman, 1945–1953, Wilson Center History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116192; “Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, Korea, Volume VII—Office of the Historian,” accessed June 19, 2019, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950v07/d130.

²³ Shawn J. Parry-Giles, The Rhetorical Presidency, Propaganda, and the Cold War, 1945–1955 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), 49; Laura A. Belmonte, Selling the American Way: U.S. Propaganda and the Cold War (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 43, http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebookbatch.PMUSE_batch:PMUSE040720150515.

²⁴ “Preliminary Analysis of the Communist BW Propaganda Campaign with Recommendations,” July 24, 1952, General CIA Records CREST, CIA FOIA (foia.cia.gov), https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp80-01065a000500050004-4.

²⁵ “Draft, Committee for a Free Asia,” December 13, 1951, DTPILLAR Vol. 1_0085, CIA FOIA (foia.cia.gov); see also Cummings, Radio Free Europe's “Crusade for Freedom,” 48.

²⁶ “The Break-Up of Colonial Empires and Its Implications for U.S. Security,” September 3, 1948, CREST—General, CIA FOIA (foia.cia.gov), https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp78-01617a003200020001-3.

²⁷ Robert J. McMahon, Dean Acheson and the Creation of an American World Order (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2009), 118.

²⁸ Lee argues that the CFA was, in short, a dual project of nation building and bloc building. Lee, Sangjoon, “The Asia Foundation's Motion-Picture Project and the Cultural Cold War in Asia,” Film History 29, no. 2 (2017): 108–137Google Scholar, https://doi.org/10.2979/filmhistory.29.2.05.

²⁹ Scott W. Lucas, “Mobilizing Culture: The State-Private Network and the CIA in the Early Cold War,” in War and Cold War in American Foreign Policy, 1942–62, ed. Dale Carter (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 83–107; Michael Warner, “The CIA'S Office of Policy Coordination: From NSC 10/2 to NSC 68,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 11, no. 2 (June 1998): 211–20, https://doi.org/10.1080/08850609808435373; Administration of Harry S. Truman, “NSC 10/2: Office of Special Projects,” June 18, 1948, https://search.proquest.com/congressional/view/app-gis/executive-orders/1948-56-4.

³⁰ Administration of Harry S. Truman, “NSC 10/2.”

³¹ “CIA Secret Financing of Private Groups Disclosed,” CQ Almanac 1967, Congressional Quarterly, 09-358-09–359, 23rd edition (1968), http://library.cqpress.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/xsite/search.php?source=cql&action=newsearch&product=all&products%5B%5D=&fulltext=%22triple+pass%22&x=0&y=0.

³² Memorandum for CIO: Committee for a Free Asia, Program and Planning, September 28, 1951, DTPILLAR Vol. 1_0040, CIA FOIA (foia.cia.gov). This job was ultimately delegated to CFA's Foreign Organization Branch, which would “bear the responsibility for bringing into the orbit of CFA activity and influence indigenous nationals and groups, joined in common religious, educational, or other points of view which may, while pursuing their own special ends, indirectly and directly assist in the achievement of Committee goals.” See “Purposes: Committee for a Free Asia,” n.d., DTPILLAR Vol. 1_001, CIA FOIA (foia.cia.gov).

³³ “Draft ‘Prospectus for the Committee for a Free Asia,’” January 26, 1951, DTPILLAR Vol. 2_0052, CIA FOIA (foia.cia.gov).

³⁴ “Levels II and III Country Objectives,” August 1958, Asia Foundation, box P 130, Social and Economic Religion Buddhism: US & Intl Programs, 1957–1960, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, California; “Pike, Introduction to Survey on Buddhism,” August 23, 1960, Asia Foundation, box P 130, Social and Economic Religion Buddhism: US & Intl Programs, 1957–1960, Hoover Institution Archives.

³⁵ Eugene Rodgers Swanger, “The World Fellowship of Buddhists, 1950 to 1966 Common Era: Unitive and Divergency Factors in a Buddhist Quest for Unity” (PhD diss., University of Iowa, 1971), 165, http://search.proquest.com/docview/302613047/.

³⁶ Swanger, “The World Fellowship of Buddhists,” 168.

³⁷ World Fellowship of Buddhists, Report of the Inaugural Conference (Columbo, Ceylon: Peramuna, 1950), 30.

³⁸ Itty Abraham, How India became Territorial: Foreign Policy, Diaspora, Geopolitics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press), 120, accessed May 26, 2020, http://stanford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.11126/stanford/9780804791632.001.0001/upso-9780804791632.

³⁹ Ober, Douglas, “From Buddha Bones to Bo Trees: Nehruvian India, Buddhism, and the Poetics of Power, 1947–1956,” Modern Asian Studies 53, no. 4 (2019): 1312–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17000907.

⁴⁰ Swanger, “The World Fellowship of Buddhists,” 191–94.

⁴¹ G. P. Malalasekera, Second World Buddhist Conference: (Tokyo, September 25th–October 13th, 1952) (n.p.: n.d.), 473–74.

⁴² Memorandum from Marvin G. McAlister to John Grover, Buddhist Conference Picture, December 30, 1952, Asia Foundation, box P-9, Plans—Motion Pictures, Hoover Institution Archives.

⁴³ Memorandum from John Grover to Gen. Ray T Maddocks, September 18, 1952, Asia Foundation, box P-9, Plans—Motion Pictures, Hoover Institution Archives.

⁴⁴ Sudha Rajagopalan, “‘In Our Grey Lives, We Happened into a Fantasy World’: Why the Soviet Union Fell for Indian Cinema,” Scroll.in, accessed March 11, 2019, https://scroll.in/reel/828601/in-our-grey-lives-we-happened-into-a-fantasy-world-why-the-soviet-union-fell-for-indian-cinema, excerpted from Sudha Rajagopalan, Leave Disco Dancer Alone! Indian Cinema and Soviet Movie-going after Stalin (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2008).

⁴⁵ James Thurber, “Soapland I—O Pioneers!” New Yorker, accessed May 22, 2019, 38, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1948/05/15/soapland-i-o-pioneers.

⁴⁶ Martin Grams, “The Shadow Unmasked,” Martin Grams (blog), February 22, 2013, http://martingrams.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-shadow-unmasked.html.

⁴⁷ “Election Campaigns,” Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, accessed May 22, 2020, https://wcftr.commarts.wisc.edu/exhibits/hollywood-democratic-committee/election-campaigns.

⁴⁸ California Legislature Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, Fourth Report, 1948: Communist Front Organizations.

⁴⁹ Leab, Daniel J., “How Red Was My Valley: Hollywood, the Cold War Film, and I Married A Communist,” Journal of Contemporary History 19, no. 1 (1984): 76CrossRefGoogle Scholar, https://doi.org/10.1177/002200948401900104.

⁵⁰ Oscar Lam to E. D. Martin, April 30, 1952, box 15, folder 42, Robert Hardy Andrews Collection, Howard Gottlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts.

⁵¹ “‘The Buddha Film—The Truth About It’ in The Buddhist,” December 1953, Asia Foundation, box P-10, Media Audio-Visual Movies Tathagata the Wayfarer (Life of Buddha) General, Hoover Institution Archives.

⁵² Popular texts on Buddhism included the works of T. W. Rhys Davids, Edward J. Thomas, Edward Conze, T. Spence Hardy, and the Journal of the Maha Bodhi Society, among others.

⁵³ Kenneth Griffith, The Discovery of Nehru: An Experience of India (London: Michael Joseph, 1989), 130.

⁵⁴ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (New York: MGM/UA Home Video, 1985).

⁵⁵ These events are found within fifteen episodes in the Cullavagga section of the Pali vinaya, available to Andrews in English translation in volumes 17 and 20 of F. Max Müller's Sacred Books of the East, 50 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1879–1910). For more on Devadatta in Buddhist literature, see Max Deeg, “The Sangha of Devadatta: Fiction and History of a Heresy in the Buddhist Tradition,” 国際仏教学大学院大学研究紀要 2 (1999): 183–95; Reginald A. Ray, Buddhist Saints in India: A Study in Buddhist Values and Orientations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Zin, Monika, “About Two Rocks in the Buddha's Life Story,” East and West 56, no. 4 (2006): 329–58Google Scholar; and Biswadeb Mukherjee, Die Überlieferung von Devadatta, dem Widersacher des Buddha, in den kanonischen Schriften (Munich: J. Kitzinger, 1966).

⁵⁶ “Tathagata Wayfarer Script,” n.d., Asia Foundation, box P-9, Movie Files, Hoover Institution Archives, B, A.

⁵⁷ “Tathagata Wayfarer Script,” 1.

⁵⁸ “Tathagata Wayfarer Script,” 2–4.

⁵⁹ Andrews's opening may have drawn on that of an Indian film adaptation of Light of Asia, “Prem Sanyas” (1925) or “Die Leuchte Asiens” in German, directed by Franz Osten and Himansu Rai.

⁶⁰ Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 41.

⁶¹ “Tathagata Wayfarer Script,” 26.

⁶² “Tathagata Wayfarer Script,” 212.

⁶³ “Tathagata Wayfarer Script,” 34–35.

⁶⁴ “Tathagata Wayfarer Script,” 45, 46, 56–66 (Tournament of Warriors material).

⁶⁵ “Tathagata Wayfarer Script,” 219.

⁶⁶ James W. McFarlane to CFA, September 23, 1953, Asia Foundation, box P-10, “Media Audio-Visual Movies Tathagata the Wayfarer (Life of Buddha) General, Hoover Institution Archives; memorandum from C. M. Tanner to James Stewart, August 18, 1953, Asia Foundation, box P-10, Media Audio-Visual Movies Tathagata the Wayfarer (Life of Buddha) General, Hoover Institution Archives.

⁶⁷ Memorandum from John F. Sullivan to C. M. Tanner, November 3, 1953, Asia Foundation, box P-10, “MEDIA Audio-Visual Movies Tathagata the Wayfarer (Life of Buddha) General,” Hoover Institution Archives.

⁶⁸ “The Buddhist,” December 1953, Asia Foundation, box P-10, Media Audio-Visual Movies Tathagata the Wayfarer (Life of Buddha) Clippings, Hoover Institution Archives.

⁶⁹ Memorandum from C. M. Tanner to John F. Sullivan, November 6, 1953, Asia Foundation, Box p-10, “MEDIA Audio-Visual Movies Tathagata the Wayfarer (Life of Buddha) General,” Hoover Institution Archives.

⁷⁰ Robert Blum to Bernard Carr,” February 3, 1954, Asia Foundation, box P-10, “Media Audio-Visual Movies Tathagata the Wayfarer (Life of Buddha) General,” Hoover Institution Archives.

⁷¹ Armstrong, unpublished manuscript, 2017.

⁷² Ford, “Cold War Monks,” 29; Armstrong, “Foundations of Free Asia: Robert Blum, the Asia Foundation and the Cultural Cold War (Revised),” 9; Blum, Robert, “The Work of the Asia Foundation,” Pacific Affairs 29, no. 1 (1956): 47CrossRefGoogle Scholar, https://doi.org/10.2307/3035457.

⁷³ Laura Harrington, Private Interview of Colman Andrews, June 9, 2018.

⁷⁴ Memorandum on The Wayfarer from Christopher Isherwood to Edwin Knopf, February 10, 1952, box 15, folder 42, Robert Hardy Andrews Collection, Howard Gottlieb Archival Research Center.

⁷⁵ Mon Soe Min, “A Christian Company and the Buddha Film,” Burman, March 3, 1955; Ven. G. Anoma, “Buddhists, Awake against Buddha Film,” Burman, March 1, 1955; Mon Soe Min, “A Christian Company and the Buddha Film”; Clippings, November 5, 1955, Asia Foundation, box P-10, Media Audio-Visual Movies Tathagata the Wayfarer (Life of Buddha) Clippings, Hoover Institution Archives.

⁷⁶ Abraham, How India became Territorial, 121.

⁷⁷ Mackinder, “The Round World.”

⁷⁸ Day, Cultures at War, 3.

⁷⁹ NDEA Language and Area Centers Program (Washington, DC: HEW, 1964), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.a0011147998.

⁸⁰ Asad, Talal, Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (New York: Humanities Press, 1973), 159Google Scholar.