 One of the early Western skeptics was French indologist Émile Senart, who argued in his "Essai sur la legende du Buddha" (1875) that the legends of Buddha's life were derived from pre-Buddhist myths of solar deities.The late Edward Conze held that there was an "absence of hard facts" regarding the first period of Buddhism and regarding the teachings of the Buddha, "none of His sayings is preserved in its original form.