The present work raises many challenging questions in regard to the nature and functional role of Buddhism in the history of Indian ideas. Beginning with a general survey of the history of researches on Buddhism, it makes a reassessment of the views on the origins of Buddhism put forward by eminent scholars and deals with the ideological background of Buddhism in which its key-concepts as found in other sources have been traced, identified and documented. The traditional substrata of the Buddhist mythology have also been explored from the pre-vedic, vedic, puranic, regional and tribal sources. It has been argued that the doctrinal, epistemological and ontological critique of Buddhism vis-a-vis the standpoints of the Jains, Vedantists, Mima{msakas and Nyaya-Vaise]sikas clearly suggest that Buddhism was viewed by its opponents as a thought-complex and not as a distinct religious system. It has also been pointed out how factionalism arising out of personality clashes eventually led to doctrinal centrifugality.
