Mapping the Scholarly Landscape: Quantifying the Evolution of Studies on Buddhist Culture

Piyodha D. Wijesekara; Hiranya Dissanayake

doi:10.18290/rkult25162.3

Published : 2025-06-30

Vol. 16 No. 2 (2025)

Mapping the Scholarly Landscape: Quantifying the Evolution of Studies on Buddhist Culture

Piyodha D. Wijesekara

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7797-7723

Hiranya Dissanayake

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4963-5125

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rkult25162.3

Abstract

Culture reflects the customs, beliefs, values, arts, and social behaviors of human beings. Buddhism originated in North India and has spread globally over 25 centuries. With the need for a systematic analysis to uncover the trends and gaps in this domain of literature, the main objective of this article is to portray the publication trends and overall development of literature related to Buddhist culture. With the Scopus database as the source of data, the Biblioshiny package and the VOSviewer tool were used in the analysis and visualization of data. The total number of 1913 documents (date of acquisition: January 10, 2023) from 1969-2022 were refined for the study. Accordingly, the number of publications increased marginally between 1969-2001, while visible growth was noted after 2001. The USA, China, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and India were the most contributing countries. The evolution of themes in Buddhist culture became more complex after 2005. Psychology, mindfulness, and development were the most addressed aspects in this domain.

Keywords:

Buddhist culture, bibliometric analysis, Biblioshiny, Scopus database, VOSviewer

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