Initially, the book ‘Buddhism, Its History and the Main Principles of Its Doctrine’ was published in the series ‘Proceedings’ of the East-Siberian Branch of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society in 1900-1901. As the author pointed out, there were several reasons for writing it. The first impulse was that ‘the ideas of Buddhism had – and still have – a great influence at almost two thirds of the inhabitants of Asia’; and several millions of Buddhists are ‘the closest neighbours of Russians in the Central Asia’. At the same time, there was no less obvious and worthy reason for the research: Buddhism was ‘an original and peculiar attempt to solve questions of the aim and meaning of human life’, to which European religious and philosophical systems gave their own answers, more familiar to Russian readers. The purpose of the author was to write a popular research book, in fact, a kind of a guidance for those who ‘did not know foreign languages or did not have an opportunity to navigate the rich Western research tradition on Buddhism’. The author considered such guidance necessary, first of all, for those engaged in the missionary activity. On his opinion, the book was designed to fill the existing gap in the popular literature on Buddhism in Russian. He saw his task in the presentation a compact essay ‘of the conclusions reached by Europeans in studying Buddhism’, as well as to complete them with his own ‘feasible observations’. The book was published in two issues: in 1900, the first one contained an essay on the history of Buddhism; in 1901, the second one – a statement of Buddhist dogma.
The author gave a detailed account of the causes and prerequisites for the emergence of Buddhism, the life and teachings of its founder, the history of the Buddhist community and teachings in India, described the main directions of Buddhism, dividing them into the southern and northern ones, and made a special accent at the history of Buddhism in Europe. In the course of his reasoning, he came to the conclusion that the difference between the southern and northern Buddhism had laid in the characteristic feature of the latter one: ‘the absence of the spirit of conservatism in it’. While ‘the south tried to preserve Hinayana in all its integrity, the north replaced Hinayana with Mahayana, and further distorted it with mysticism, and, finally, in almost every country, it added a number of native gods and cults’. Asking whether Buddhism is able to maintain its unity in the future, P. argued that, despite the differences between national schools, both the northern and southern Buddhism had a common basis and common starting points, which would be a guarantee of a general Buddhist identity. In the chapter ‘The Buddhist community and the Buddhist doctrine among Mongolian tribes’, the author paid a special attention to the issue of spreading Buddhism in the Russian Empire among Buryats and Kalmyks, i.e. identifying the reasons for the reception of Buddhism by those peoples, and the characteristics of the internal organization of their communities; and also he analyzed the system of managing and control of their religious life by imperial government bodies.