SOME NOTES on BUDDHISM STUDIES in TÜRKİYE
Prof. Dr. A. Merthan DÜNDAR1

As you know, the roots of Balkan and Anatolian Turks are in Asia. The north and westof present-day Mongolia is known as the homeland of the Turks. In known history, Turkic
peoples lived and ruled the civilization centers in Asia for 2000 years until they reached Turkeyand Europe. It is possible to rank these civilization centers from east to west as follows: China,India, Transoxiana, Afganistan, Iran, Mesopotamia, Anatolia we can say lands of Greek
civilisation and Roman Empire and Egypt at Africa. In these civilization centers, Turks not
only met with the divine religions like, Judaism, Christianity and Islam but also benefited fromEastern teachings like Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Manicheism etc. There have been many
Turkish groups that have embraced these divine religions or adopted the eastern teachings. It isaccepted by academic circles in Türkiye that Turks met Buddhism for the first time during theHun period2. Later, there have been many Turkish groups that have accepted the teachings ofBuddhism beginning from the 5th century. The effect of the Buddhism contiuned amoung theTurks at the T’o-pa or Tabgach State period too.

Today, there are Turkish-speaking peoples who believe in different religions other thanIslam like Turkish speaking Krymchaks and Karaite Jews in Crimea, Lithuania and Türkiye, as
the remains of the Khazar Empire (650-965 AC) or Christian Urums living in Türkiye, Ukraine, Russia,Kazakistan and Greece, Chuvashs, Hakas and,Yakuts in Russia and Gagauz are in Moldova.
From historical records like Suishu 隋書 we know that during the First Türk Empire (Tokketsu)(542-581) at the 6th century, the Türk Mukan Kağan and later his elder brother T’a-po or Taspar-TatparKağan believed in Buddhism and even built a Buddhist temple. He sent envoys to North China asking
for the Buddhist canon. From the sources, we see that the Buddhist monk Hui Lin gave information toTaspar Kagan about Buddhism, and Taspar, who was very impressed by these, requested the Sutras
called Nie-pan, Hua-yen, Ching-min and Shih-t'ung to learn more. The Northern Ch'i (535-577)

1

Director of Asia-Pacific Research Center of Ankara University (APAM)-Türkiye.
Yrd. Doç.Dr. Tilla Deniz BAYKUZU, “Hunların Kayıp Kitapları ve Sutralar”, Sema Barutçu ÖZÖNDER, “EskiTürklerde Dil ve Edebiyat”, Harun GÜNGÖR, “Eski Türklerde Din”, Hans J. KLIMKEIT Çeviren: Mehmet T.
BERBERCAN, “Türk Orta Asyasında Budizm”.
2

emperor, who heard about the khagan's interest in Buddhism, had the Nirvana Sutra translated intoTurkish by a monk named Liu Shih-ching, who spoke Turkish, to present it to Kagan3.

But the belief in Buddhism seemed very limited among the Early Türks. In the Second TürkEmpire (582-744), the belief of Buddhism had already fallen into decay. When Bilge Kagan intended tobuild a Buddhist temple, he was immediately dissuaded by his consultant, Tonyukuk. The argument ofTonyukuk was that Buddhism and Daoism require their adherents to be compassionate and sympathetic,
which are fatal characteristics for fighting soldiers 4 . After the collaps of the Türk Empire byUyghurs, from the 9th century onwards, most of the Uyghurs accepted Buddhism and thiscontinued until the 14th century.
Mahayana Buddhism (Uluğ kölüngü meaning “big chariot”) was widespread among theearly Turks and adapted to the living conditions, historical traditions, ethnography and culture,and philosophical ideas of the early Turks. Due to Buddhism, ancient Indian philosophy andculture penetrated the early Turkic world. In this period, works containing religious,
philosophical and didactic materials were translated into the old Turkic language like Uyghur
Turkish. Usually these materials were translations from Sanskrit, Tokharian, Sogdian andChinese5. These texts which were taken from Kizil, Bezeklik, are existing in the libraries ofmany countries such as Germany, United States of America, Korea, Japan and China.

With the spread of Islam among the Turks of Asia, Buddhism lost its power as a belief,
but the remnants of the Buddhist culture continued to live among the culture of some small
group of Turks in Asia. Today, some of the Tuvan Turks in Russia and the Yellow Uyghurs orYugurs in China are still Buddhists.

In the Ottoman era, information about Buddhism in Turkish literature is mostly within
the scope of world religions or history of religions. Until the 19th century, -like European
countries- it is almost impossible to find a study that directly examines Buddhism using
academic methods in Turkey. But, Buddhism seems to have started to be wondered by Ottoman
Turkish intellectuals in the 19th century, apart from the clergy. One of these intellectuals isŞemsettin Sami and in his work "Esatir", which he wrote in 1878, he gave information about
3

Tilla Deniz BAYKUZU, “V. Yüzyılda Hunlar Ve Budhizm”, A.Ü. Türkiyat Araştırmaları Enstitüsü Dergisi, Sayı34, Erzurum 2007.
4
http://acta.bibl.u-szeged.hu/64043/1/altaica_052_015-020.pdf
5Kasımcan SADIKOV, Eski Türklerin Komşu Doğu Halklarıyla Kültürel İlişkilerinde Budizmin Yeri.

the religions of India and he partially addresses the subject of Buddha and Buddhism as well.
Another work written at that time is Tarihi-i Edyan “The History of Religions”by Ahmet Mithat
Efendi in 19106. In the last part of his book, he talks about Buddhism among Indian religions7.
He especially focused on the moral teachings of Buddhism. After Ahmet Mithat Efendi, somescholars also wrote books on Religion History and talked about Buddhsim like Mahmud EsadSEYDİŞEHRİ's (Tarih-i Edyan, 1914), Mehmed Esad's (Tarih-i Edyan, History of Criticism),
Edyan, 1917) and M. Şemseddin GÜNALTAY (Tarih-i Edyan, 1922)8.

Another important aspect of Ahmet Mithat Efendi is that he wrote the first book that
focused directly on Buddhism. His work titled, “30.000 Budhists in Paris” was published in1890. Apart from these pioneering studies, it is possible to see articles about Buddha andBuddhism in Ottoman period journals like Sebilürreşâd (later Sırat-ı Müstakim).

It is possible to say that academic research on Buddhism increased in Turkey in theRepublican Period. We can say that, after the First World War, with the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire and the establishment of the new Turkish republic, a new nation-building process wasstarted. One of the most important foundations of this process was academia, in other words
history.

As an intellectual leader, Mustafa Kemal ATATÜRK has also read many books,
especially on the history and history of religions. During the first 15 years of the new Republic,
he established faculties for history, language and religion studies. One of them is Ankara
University Faculty of Language, History and Geography, of which I am teaching. When it
opened in 1936, one of the first departments in our faculty was the Indology Department, wherethe Sanskrit language was taught and Buddhism studies were conducted, German Professor
Walter RUBEN was appointed as its director9.

6Ali GÜL, Ahmet Mithat Efendi’nin Dinler Tarihi Kitabı Ve Dersleri Üzerine Bazı Tespitler,
https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/2706274
7Cengiz BATUK, Ahmed Midhat Efendi ve Tarih-i Edyan, MİLEL VE NİHAL, inanç– kültür–mitoloj,
https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/109421
8Ali GÜL, Ahmet Mithat Efendi’nin Dinler Tarihi Kitabı Ve Dersleri Üzerine Bazı Tespitler,
https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/2706274
9Derya KESKİN, “Türk Hindolojisinin Kurucusu: Prof. Dr. Walter Ruben”,
https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/2022243

Atatürk predicted that for understanding the Göktürk and Uyghur periods, deep
researches on Turkish history should be made. For this reason, both the language and religionof these periods had to be understood well. Researching the Buddhist texts, especially writtenin Uyghur, would be useful to understand the sources of both Turkish language and culture.

It is understood that Atatürk was especially interested in Buddhism. We see the proofof this in a telegram he sent to İsmet İnönü for the opening of Izmir Fair in 1934. At the end of
the telegram, Atatürk said “Namo İsmet”. It is the presence of the phrase “respect to İsmet” as
it is known, religious Buddhist works begin with “Namo but, Namo drama, Namo sang” 10.

Hilmi Ömer BUDDA (1894-1952), is the most important and interesting researcher ofthe republican period, who focused on Buddhism among the researches on the history ofreligions. He is the first Historian of Religions in Turkey and you can see that his surname isBudda. He chose Budda as his surname. Hilmi Ömer associated Buddha with the Saka Turksand even claimed that Buddha might be of Turkish ancestry. One of the most importantcontributions of Buddha to the field of History of Religions is the book History of Religions,which he published in 1935 by working on it for many years. Hilmi Ömer in this book; focusedon Indian religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Cainism), Tibetan religion (with the title Lamaism),
Chinese religions (Primitive religion, Taoism, Confucianism, Chinese Buddhism), and finallyJapanese religion and Japanese Buddhism.
One of the first important studies on Buddhism in Turkey is the book “Gotama Buddha
According to Pali Texts” written by Asaf Halet ÇELEBI in 1946. Today, Prof. Korhan KAYA,Prof. Yalçın KAYALI Vice Director of Asia-Pacific Research Center (APAM), Prof. Derya
CAN are the leading academics studying on Buddhism. As APAM, we are focusing on theBuddhist history and effect of the Buddhist culture on Asian countries.

Conlusion
It is possible to say that Buddhisim studies in Turkiye are mainly carried out inTheology Faculties and Turcology Departments of universities. Moreover, studies on thehistory of Chinese and Japanese Buddhism have begun to increase with the increase in the10Özkan İZGİ, “ Orta Asya Türklerinin Kültür Kaynakları”, https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/articlefile/152069

number of academics who speak Chinese and Japanese. As a sample, researcher Mr. İbrahimEmre ŞAMLIOĞLU from Ankara University Faculty of Divinity is making his PhD study on
Japanese Buddhism and he will be in Japan next month.
Some Turkology Departments are working intensively on the Buddhist Uyghur
Period and Uyghur Buddhist manuscripts, religious texts are analyzed and translated tocontemporary Turkish. Prof. Sema Barutçu ÖZÖNDER and Prof. Mehmet ÖLMEZ are the twoof the leading academics in this field. In addition, studies on Buddhism and Buddhist culture
are contiuned in the Departments of Indology, Sinology and Japanology. Interest in Buddhism
and Buddhist culture in Turkey is increasing day by day. I hope there will be opportunities toconduct joint research procets with important universities such as Ryukoku University.