Archaeological Reflections and the Study of South Asian Buddhism

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.