EUGENE BURNOUF (1801–1852) AND HIS WORK “INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF INDIAN BUDDHISM”

The article examines the life and ideas of Eugene Burnouf (1801– 1852), one of the leading European Buddhologists of the 19th century. His work “Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism” is considered the first scientific study of Indian Buddhism. The human image of the Buddha recreated in this work formed the basis of the concept of the “historical Buddha”, which prevailed at the end of the 19th century in Buddhist studies. For a long time, Burnouf’s work was considered outdated, but an English translation published in 2010 brought this research back into scientific circulation. The article briefly describes Burnouf’s biography, examines the state of European knowledge about the Buddha and Buddhism by the beginning of Burnouf’s activity. The article analyzes the image of the Buddha created by Burnouf as a preacher of morality and early Buddhism as a simple moral teaching. It is shown that such a representation is due to the classification of texts adopted by Burnouf. The author shows the shift of his research interest from the Mahayana sutras to earlier texts. The final part of the article describes some new ideas and possibilities arising from the modern reading of Burnouf’s text, in particular, the revision of the concept of the “historical Buddha” and the genesis of the terms “Mahayana” and “Hinayana”. A hypothesis is proposed about the possible influence of the “Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism” on L.N. Tolstoy