Max Müller: His life, works and contributions to the history of religions

The second half of XIX. century witnessed the apperance of manydisciplines at the science of humanity. One of these science was the history ofreligions. Friedrich Max Müller is the most important figure at the formation ofthis science. Müller was accepted as the founder of the history of religions. Hedid the most important historical researches for this disciple along his academiclife. Before all he coined and used the religionswissenschaft (science of religion)to stress independence of this science. And he brought a method and gave aorder to this science which was a mess before. At the same time he gave manylectures and wrote scholarly works. Also he helped the growing of a scholargeneration who were translaters and interpreters by the help of fifty volumesThe Sacred Books of the East that he prepared some of them. At the same timehe exhibited the methods by his İndological researches.At the XIX. century, the subject of the history of religions was the originand growth of religion. This subject was looked by the light of evolutionalparadigm and then many theory appeared. Some of them are fetichism,animism, worsiph of ancestors and totemism. Max Müller?s primary object wasthe origin and growth of religion like other scholars of century. He explaineddefiencies of this theories. And the theory of Müller was known as naturism.Müller explains this theory by observing of the religions of İndia. Forthis purpose, he studied the ancient religious recordings of İndia and broughtlight to the historical traces of the human mind which arrived from nature tonatures god and then to the god of nature.Friedrich Max Müller who was the founder of the history of religions isforgotten as time goes on by western academical world. Although he is known asthe father of the history of religions in our country, his researches andobservations that influenced the XIX. century are not known enough. By thisstudy, we aimed to remind to our country?s academical environment theresearches that Müller did.