International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume VI, Issue VI, June 2022 | ISSN 2454–6186
Archaeological Reflections and the Study of South Asian Buddhism
Dr. Sumudu Dharmarathna
Senior Lecturer, Department of History, University of Peradenita
As we are aware, there are two bodies of data available to study the history of Buddhism – literary material and archaeological and epigraphic material. Traditionally it is accepted that the large body of literary material is the most suitable for the studies of religious. From the mid-nineteenth century there has been a significant shift in the direction of Buddhist studies, because, on the one hand, literary works of Buddhist traditions came to be discovered one after another. On the other hand, archaeological and epigraphical sources were considered a powerful historical witness of Buddhist cultural history. Thus, while considering the significance of archaeological sources than the textual material for religious studies, most of them were attempted to make various arguments on the texts-bound studies of Buddhism. In this article, attention has been paid to this debatable issue regarding much more accurate sources material for the study of the nature of Buddhist religious culture. Here my attempt is made to explore new interpretations of the history of Buddhism readdressing some of early implications while reevaluating previous researches on the subject, dealing with architectural and inscriptional materials of the region.
Key words: History of Buddhism, Sources, Archaeology
I. INTRODUCTION
As we are aware, there are two bodies of data available to study the history of Buddhism – a large body of literary material and archaeological and epigraphic material. While translating Pāli and Sanskrit texts, European scholars namely Burnouf, Senart, Oldenberg, T.W. Rhys Davids, Windisch, George Turnour, Major Jonathan Forbes and Sir James Emerson Tennent laid the foundation for the systematic studies of Buddhism (Bhattacharyya, 1981: 1-18). From the mid-nineteenth century there has been a significant shift in the direction of Buddhist studies, because, on the one hand, literary works of Buddhist traditions came to be discovered one after another. On the other hand, archaeological and epigraphical sources were considered a powerful historical witness of Buddhist cultural history. Thus, while considering the significance of archaeological sources than the textual material for religious studies, most of them were attempted to make various arguments on the texts-bound studies of Buddhist culture. In this article, attention has been paid to this debatable issue regarding much more accurate sources material for the study of the nature of Buddhist religious culture. Here my main concern is to investigate the acceptability of archaeological material for the study of Buddhism.