Buddhist studies, which have been researched for over one hundred years in European and Japanese universities, have obtained an outstanding outcome. Back to Taiwan, Buddhist studies are researched merely by the scholars of Buddhist colleges, several graduate institutes of religious studies and philosophy. The crucial reason that Buddhist Literature is extremely neglected in all the literature departments of universities is lacking a “History of Chinese Buddhist Literature” to provide the relative vision. One could deal with specifi c topics for researching on Buddhist Literature while one has to clarify the categories and analyze the problems of methodology to construct “History of Chinese Buddhist Literature.” However, the latter is defi nitely the most diffi cult part for this paper to master. Nowadays, many groups in China have started to construct it, but there is still no action in Taiwan. Based on the necessity of popularizing education on Buddhist Literature, constructing a “History of Chinese Literature” is a essential and indispensable strategy. The researcher have written an article about ‘a Discussion on Methodology of Construction of “History of Chinese Buddhist Literature” ‘. On this foundation, the researcher want to ‘’retranslate’’ it, on the one hand, by consulting the general methods of constructing “History of Chinese Literature”, on the other hand, by comparison of the issues of how to draw the materials from different literature categories. Second, this paper discusses Chinese Buddhist literature through ‘theory of categories’ and ‘methodology of construction.’ There are three categories disserted here, including literati’s composition, Buddhist literature, and monks’ composition. The content of “History of Chinese Buddhist Literature” would be presented only if the categories are determined. Finally, as to methodology, due to the complication of constructing the literary history, only “compiling, editing and discriminating scattered documents and manuscripts, application of philology and bibliography” and “consideration of historical views” are two aspects currently discussed in this paper. However, literary history, the result of a complicated macrosystem dynamics, is the production of multi-power combination. Synchronic reasons and diachronic historical views should be considered within ‘theory of categories’ and ‘methodology’ to construct Buddhist literary history. Therefore, the amplification, compilation and editing of literary works could represent more the turbulent and interrupted process of culture development and form a meaningful well-ordered construction out of disordered chaos.
