Korea Journal of Buddhist StudiesISSN:1598-0642(Print)불교학연구회

This paper concerns European reconstruction of early Buddhist history, which has been considered one of the major achievements of modern Buddhist scholarship of late 19th century Europe. Despite the scarcity of historically datable textual sources in Indian Buddhism, European Buddhist scholarship has made considerable achievement in reconstructing the history of early Buddhism through highly developed philology of their times and archeological research on various Buddhist sites. However, the early history of Buddhism, especially the period beginning with the Buddha’ s death and subsequent formation of various Buddhist sects, has left us with only records of Buddhist texts from the later period, which are often inconsistent and at odds with each other. Moreover, due to many missing links, historical imagination and speculation were inevitable in the reconstruction of early Buddhist history. In this paper, I examine the tacit assumptions of modern Buddhist scholarship, assumptions which were applied in reconstructing early Buddhist history, and I explore a new way of reconstructing early Buddhist history based on reflections on the religious characteristics of Buddhism rather than solely through philological methodology employed in modern European Buddhist scholarship. This will open up various ways of imagining/reconstructing early Buddhism that are beyond the limitations of philological methodology.