Archaeology of Buddhism: India

Abstract

Archaeological material can be located not only in space and time fairly reasonably, it also offers an unfiltered access to Indian Buddhism. However, an overwhelming majority of modern Buddhist scholarship still sees textual material as the most important source of information on Buddhism and that the archaeological data, though useful, can only be understood fully if used as supportive of the textual data. In other words, the usefulness of archaeological sources as independent witnesses is effectively ignored, when, compared to the textual material, the archaeological and epigraphical material offers the most direct access to Buddhism and the way it was followed by its adherents across all social and economic strata of Indian society. Thus, for the proper study of Indian Buddhism, the value of archaeological material needs to be taken into consideration. Here, an effort has been made to show that a study of Buddhism can gain significantly through archaeology.