불교 고고학의 연구방법 시론

Abstract

The term of ‘Archeology of Buddhism’ in dictionaries means as a type of methodology that explores the remains of Buddhism. In professional academia, it can also be a part of ‘religion of Buddhism’, where the term can be defined as an archeological methodology to study and research the remains or circumstances of Buddhism. Compared to the existing researches of remains of Buddhism, ‘Archeology of Buddhism’ is still unstable as an academic term. Considering this problem, the paper purports to define the academic term of ‘Archeology of Buddhism’ and to explore methods to research it. The research has employed the studies in other Asian countries as well as those in our own country. First of all, the research suggested that ‘Archeology of Buddhism’ should be a process of examining history of Buddhism, which still demands further studies. It requires deliberation if the results of research could be interpreted as history of Buddhism beyond history of dynasties. The research divided the dimension into two parts, time and space, and analyzed the characteristics and critical points from the two perspectives. I also suggested the following points in methodology in order to contribute to establishing ‘Archeology of Buddhism’ as an academic arena: 1) A chronological chart including literature and archeological data should be required for significant results; 2) The problems, such as overlapping remains in a geographical meaning, would be checked byexploring cultural meanings. This paper proposed the way to specify the transitional situations as a religious belief or a space involved changed; and 3) The criteria and methods of classification of relics can be created by explaining q the process of restoration of Tanalpan in study of roof tiles. Roof tiles would indicate the chronological orders of archeological remains in a best way, since they are more stable and the amount of them are bigger than porcelains, which have always demanded more efforts and studies to classify and arrange in an efficient way. 4) In a separate chapter, a few case studies of methodology were examined to interpret philosophy and thoughts of Buddhism to understand its cultural meaning. In terms of the comprehensive scope of ‘Archeology of Buddhism’beyond the situations that the relics are telling, Buddhism instruments could also demand further text developments for cultural understanding. This study is an introductory one, which may require more and further researches and cooperative inquiries.