Your question is a little confusing to me because your title mentions scholarship/academia but then you mention "easily accessible literature" which makes me think maybe you are actually looking for popular histories meant for a non-academic audience?

Anyway, is there less English language scholarship on Buddhism than there is on Christianity? Certainly, but that shouldn't be surprising since there are significantly more Christians currently and throughout history in the west. In the same sense there is alot more English language scholarship on Western political history than English language scholarship on Chinese political history.

That said, I certainty don't think we here in the west are lacking in quality English-language Buddhist scholarship. I personally own over 500 scholarly books and in-depth research papers regarding Buddhist history and this is a small fraction of what is available since I have a somewhat narrow scope of interest. There may be less Buddhist scholarship than Christian scholarship but its almost a moot point because even if its less, its still more than one person could ever fully explore unless it was a fulltime, multi-year quest.

As for popular histories, I would agree that there are significantly less available in the English language when looking at the ratio of academic to popular Buddhist works. This is simply because here in the west there simply alot more Christians so the market is significantly greater.

If you are interested in any specific areas of Buddhist scholarship let me know and I will see if I can make a suggestion.

I'm not entirely sure how to answer your question except to say that there is a healthy and thriving academic ecosystem of Hindu and Buddhist scholarship. My thoughts are kind of scattered, I'm not really sure how to make a cohesive narrative about this all but there's a few things to keep in mind:

1. The history and symbiotic nature of western academia and the church. For most of western history, religion (i.e. Christianity) was integral to the educated mind, and (while I'm sure I'm generalizing) an educated person in Europe and America had a working knowledge of Latin and Greek. In addition, Hebrew was studied particularly for Biblical scholars. Indeed, while Philology has a much longer history in Europe, going back to the origins of etymological thinking in Latin texts, translations of the Bible by looking at the original Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and Aramaic was common and well studied in Europe across its history, and today in Biblical Seminaries, it is still an important aspect of religious study. However, Western Academia has more or less become secularized. Religious studies is its own thing, and the vast majority of students across Europe and America are not required to take religious classes, or even select for optional ones.

2. By the time Hindu and Buddhist texts and study entered the equation in the Western Academic frame work, they were subsumed into anthropological, historical, and philological fields of study. J. W. de Jong's A Brief History of Buddhist Studies in Europe and America is a good intro (about 100 pages) of the developments of Buddhist studies (separate and apart from Sinology and Japanology). Most Buddhist scholars through the 19th and 20th Century were not interested in researching Buddhism for religious reasons (that said, some of the best Buddhist and Tibetological work have been done by Christian missionaries, see H. A. Jäschke's dictionary) they did it for academic reasons, so Buddhist and Hindu studies grew out of western anthropological, historical, and philological studies. Not the religious departments.

3. Buddhist learning (and Hindu learning, for that matter) has a long long history in Asia. Indeed, it's certainly notable that Japan is a celebrated center of Buddhological research, and where some of the best Indian and Tibetan works of Buddhist research have come out, and this probably owes a lot to Japan's indigenous interest in Buddhism, and how Japan copied western institutions with their own native spin after the Meiji Restoration.

4. Buddhist monks have integral to the western research process of Buddhology. In my own department of study it's hard to turn around without seeing a Buddhist monk or former monk (usually former novice as opposed to a former full bhikkhu). And the University of Virginia's Tibetological program was started by refugee Kalmyk monks fleeing vengeant repression from the Stalin in the wake of World War II. And while most western academics researching Buddhism and Hinduism may have a (excuse the adjective) "pure" academic interest, (i.e. they are not religious practitioners themselves), there is still a vested interest in a lot of Buddhist monks and religious scholars to understand the Indian origins and to develop a critical understanding of their religion and its origins. In other words, I'm not a Buddhist monk, but Nyingma Buddhist scholars might be interested in my research to have a more nuanced and developed understanding of their own religious tradition.

5. While Buddhist scholars have their own institutions of learning (i.e. the monastery), the methodology is not the same. Buddhist monks that I know in academic setting use their time and skills at western (or Japanese) academic institutions to complement their traditional learning. That said, there is a concept in Indian religious of oral transmission being key to the living tradition. A text that fails to pass from master to student "dies." I have the paper somewhere on my harddrive (I hope... I lost my external harddrive six months ago and have been suffering ever since) studying a Shaivite Yogin tradition in Kashmir. The author discovered an ancient text that was not being taught or transmitted any longer among religious circles. When he asked the Guru about it, the Guru dismissed it, saying that even if the text had valuable information integral to the tradition, it would have been passed along. The fact that it was not was evidence to the Guru that it had decayed spiritually, and was no longer necessary. All it had was historical value to an academic interested in such things (and even then the Guru seemed to be dismissive of this kind of "value"). This is also present in Buddhist tradition. Tibetan Buddhist scholars were remiss to burn books (not always, but burning was the exception to the rule) but sectarian violence still found the need to eliminate certain books from the textual tradition. Their preferred method was to sew the books shut in sealed bags and bury them. As their authors, teachers, and students died, the books eventually lost their spiritual potency. This was, for example, how the Jonang, Bodong, and Shakya Chokden teachings were supressed during the reign of the Fifth Dalai Lama. That said, this principle is not necessarily as strong in Buddhism as it is in Hindu tradition. To use an anecdote, I was once directed by a Nyingma teacher to look into Sam van Schaik's Tibetan Zen. And he wasn't just referring historically, either, but for spiritual value. While the notion of originality and creativity may be different in Buddhist tradition, there is some interest in the spiritual value of historical Buddhist texts. The great polymath and libertine Gedun Choephel translated the famed Dhammapada from the Pali Canon into Tibetan, which it had never been prior to his translation.

Conclusion: There very much is a rich and varied scholarship of Hindu and Buddhist traditions. But generally speaking, modern Western Academia grew organically out of the traditions of learning and scholarship of Christian Europe. Buddhist and Hindu traditions have a very long history of what we might otherwise call scholarship, but they did not grow organically into modern scholastic traditions. Today, Buddhist Studies (sometimes in the departments of Tibetology, sometimes just in general "Religious Studies," or subsumed under Sinology and Japanology) and Hindu Studies (usually a main feature of the departments of Indology) are primarily used to complement, not act as, the primary study of religious scholars - Buddhist monks and Hindu sannyasins. The methodology of learning in traditional Buddhism and Hinduism is very different from the Western Academic framework, which grew out of the study of Christian religion and the Scientific Revolution, rather our westernized study of eastern topics were originally branches of anthropology, history, and philology. Branches that have outgrown their original trees and have developed into orchards of their own. Albeit maintaining the original DNA of Western Academia, not the religious pedagogy developed over centuries in Himalayan monasteries.

Sources:

J.W. de Jong, A Brief History of Buddhist Studies in Europe and America

Donald S. Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-la: Tibetan Buddhism and the West

James Turner, Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities

Hey there,

Just to let you know, your question is fine, and we're letting it stand. However, you should be aware that questions framed as 'Why didn't X do Y' relatively often don't get an answer that meets our standards (in our experience as moderators). There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, it often can be difficult to prove the counterfactual: historians know much more about what happened than what might have happened. Secondly, 'why didn't X do Y' questions are sometimes phrased in an ahistorical way. It's worth remembering that people in the past couldn't see into the future, and they generally didn't have all the information we now have about their situations; things that look obvious now didn't necessarily look that way at the time.

If you end up not getting a response after a day or two, consider asking a new question focusing instead on why what happened did happen (rather than why what didn't happen didn't happen) - this kind of question is more likely to get a response in our experience. Hope this helps!