Abstract
Renan's interest in "religious history", a term he understood in its broadest sense, was bound to lead him to tackle the question of Buddhism, at a time when studies in this field were progressing by leaps and bounds in Europe. Like most of his contemporaries, even the specialists, he could only do so on the basis of models known to him, above all the monotheistic religions and classical philosophical systems, which were as much a source of incomprehension as of explanation. We must ask ourselves whether the fundamental problem he discerns in Shakyamuni's doctrine actually corresponds to a difficulty perceived as such in the Buddhist world, and whether a solution had already been found in Asia.
