RITUALISM IN BUDDHISM IN THE INTERPRETATION OF RUSSIAN BUDDHOLOGY (1831-1991)

Abstract

The attitude towards Buddhism among its researchers has always been different. In the works of the first Buddhologists there was a separation of the philosophical conceptions of the Buddhist religion and its ceremonial side, and the latter was often either criticized or ignored altogether. In the postrevolutionary period many Buddhist works paid little attention to the ritual side of Buddhism, and the situation changed only in the post-war years. The article examines the works of domestic Buddhologists of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union from 1831 to 1991, where the lower boundary of the period under consideration is the date of publication of the first academic work on Buddhology, and the upper one is the collapse of the USSR