By P.K.Balachandran/Sunday Obsever
Colombo, January 26: A new book, Casting the Buddha: A Monumental History of Buddhism in India authored by Shashank Shekhar Sinha (Macmillan, New Delhi, 2024) is a monumental work detailing and describing the monuments and archaeological remains of Buddhism in India and their relationship with Buddhist texts of the day.
Sinha, an independent researcher, argues that students of Buddhism should not restrict themselves to Buddhist texts if they are to understand Buddhism as it was practiced in India at any given point of time in the last 2500 years. Scholars will have to correlate what they read in the texts with what can be seen in the monuments, to clearly understand and accurately portray the beliefs, practices and culture that prevailed during the “Buddhist-era” in India (when Buddhism held sway over the vast land).
Contrary to the generally accepted view, Sinha believes that Buddhism did not die in the 13 th.Century with the destruction of Nalanda University in Bihar by the iconoclastic Delhi Sultan Bakhtiyar Khilji. Buddhism has had a continuous existence in India, though it was pushed to the margins between the 13 th. and the 19 th. Centuries. Emerging Indian religions or faiths and even the Vedic or the Brahminical religion which saw a revival, had conversations or debates about Buddhism continuously.
In the 19 th and 20 th. Centuries, a Buddhist revival did take place visibly. In significant ways, Buddhism came to occupy the centre-stage in Indian politics, particularly in the mobilization of the depressed or marginalized castes . Subsequently, in the Nehruvian-era, it became a key tool in forging ties with Buddhist countries in South, South East and East Asia.
The national symbols of “Hindu” India now are actually Buddhist – such as the Dharmachakra and the Lion Capital. The wheel in the centre of the Indian flag, known as the Ashoka Chakra, represents the Dharmachakra, the law of dharma, or the eternal wheel of righteousness. It symbolizes the Buddhist notion of justice in society and the moral principles that should guide actions. The Ashoka Chakra also represents India’s commitment to upholding the rule of law, peace, and justice as part of its national identity.
Successive Indian governments have used India’s Buddhist past to establish symbiotic or civilizational links with many countries of East, South East and South Asia including Sri Lanka and Myanmar.
West’s Contribution to Buddhist Revival
Sinha gives ample credit to Westerners who had rediscovered Buddhism and helped spread an awareness of it across the world. But he challenges the view that but for the Westerners, Indians would continue to think that Buddhism died in their country in the 13th.Century.
Edwin Arnold’s Light of Asia claims that Buddhism was re-discovered by Westerners in the 19 th. Century. But Sinha argues that India had already had a tradition of conversations with Buddhism in the pre-Colonial and early Colonial era. A First Century Buddhist text in Sanskrit called Vajrasuchi (Diamond cutter) attributed to one Ashwaghosha, was against Brahminical casteism. It was published in 1839, forty years before Edwin Arnold’s book was published in 1879. Sinha says that Vajrasuchi’s English translation was a hit across India and Europe among social reformers and Christian missionaries too. It was translated into Hindi, Bengali, Tamil and Nepali.
Because of the expansion of trade, in the 12 and the 13 Centuries, the West began hearing about Buddhism in India. Marco Polo had given an account of it. However, the focus of the Westerners was South East Asia and not India.
If the European travellers and merchants saw stupas and monasteries, these were in a very dilapidated condition with no obvious connection with Buddhism. Xuanzang for instance found Buddha’s images in Hindu temples indicating that Hinduism had absorbed Buddhism as an avatar of Vishnu.
However, Brahminsm was resisting the mixing of Buddhism with Hinduism. Brahmins continued their tirades against Buddhism. Therefore, the ascendency of Brahminism did not obliterate Buddhist thoughts and ideas.
During their early interactions with India, European scholars and enthusiasts were debating whether the Buddha was a mythical figure or a real figure (a historical person like Jesus or Mohammad). The other question was whether the Buddha was born in India or Persia or Mongolia.
The texts that were available to Westerners at that time were in Sanskrit and not in Pali, the language the Buddha used. And the material pertained to the Mahayana school of Buddhism.
But the study of Buddhism in various parts of South East Asia and India gradually convinced researchers that they were all part of, or variations of, one religion- Buddhism and that its origin was in India.
Eugene Burnauf (1801-1852) was the first European to write a book on “Indian Buddhism” or Buddhism as practiced in India. It was based on Sanskrit manuscripts from Nepal. It was then found that texts from Tibet and China were actually translations of Indian texts.
Towards the end of the 19 th.Century, Pali texts were being found. They were taken note of and translated. Thomas William Rhys-Davids formed the Pali Text Society in 1881 to collect, translate and publish them.
A deep study of the Pali texts showed that the Buddha was a social reformer, challenging the hegemony of the Brahmins and the hold of Vedic rituals and sacrifices. Soon, scholars also sensed that there were differences between the original teachings of the Buddha and his immediate disciples and later accounts and interpolations.
Discovery of Monuments
While the scholars were steeped in their manuscripts, paintings of places in India some of which with Buddhist links, appeared in the European media. William Daniel published his engravings in 1830, while Charles D’Oyly’s lithographs came out in 1838.
The advent of archaeology in the 19 th.Century contributed to an increase in the knowledge of Buddhism in India. The first set of archaeological excavations were not done by professionals. An amateur, Colin Mackenzie, found remains of a stupa in Amaravati in Andhra Pradesh in 1798. In 1800, a doctor excavated a stupa in Vaishali in Bihar. In 1905, in the course of another excavation in Sarnath in Uttar Pradesh, the Lion Capital of Ashoka was discovered.
The stupas in Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh were discovered by Gen. Taylor in 1818. Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab got excavations done in Manikyala in North West India in 1830, and this was followed by further excavations in the Gandhara region (now in Pakistan) by Alexander Burns and Charles Masson. But since Burns and Massons found Greek coins in the stupas, they thought the stupas were tombs of Greek kings.
But between 1834 and 1837, James Prinsep, an assay master (an officer appointed to try the weight and fineness of the precious metals) in the Indian mint, was able to decipher the Brahmi and Kharoshthi writings in coins and stupas. This was due to Prinsep’s contacts in Buddhist Ceylon such as the civil servant George Turnour and the Buddhist monks Turnour knew.
In 1861, with the founding of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the appointment of Gen. Sir Alexander Cunningham, as its Director General, discoveries multiplied. Cunningham traced the structures mentioned by Chinese travellers Faxian (4 th.and 5th Centuries CE) and Xuanzang (7 th.Century CE). It was in 1830 that the writings of Faxian and Xuanzang were published (in French first).
Between 1861 and 1865, Cunningham had identified 160 Buddhist sites in North India. The Gandhara area was excavated and the Bamiyan Buddha in Afghanistan was discovered. By 1884, the Mahabodhi temple complex in Bodh Gaya in Bihar was renovated. It became one of the four holy sites related to the life of the Buddha, and particularly to the attainment of Enlightenment.
The Mahabodhi Temple Complex was the first temple built by Emperor Asoka in the 3rd century BC. The present temple was built in the 5th or the 6th Century. It is one of the earliest Buddhist temples built entirely in brick, still standing, from the late Gupta period and it is considered to have had significant influence in the development of brick architecture over the centuries, Sinha says.
Director General ASI, Sir John Marshall (1902-28), was more interested in discovering and restoring stupas and monasteries associated with Emperor Asoka. “The stupa remains were correlated with contents in the written texts to get a full picture of the ideas and practices of Buddhism in various places. The sculptures gave evidence of Buddhist practices. Coins, inscriptions and artefacts helped tell the story with greater accuracy. Marshall was able to link the sites of Asoka with the 5th.centry Buddhist text Divyavadana.” Sinha points out.
Fascination with world religions was a feature of Western intellectual life in the second half of the 19 th. Century. Interest in Buddhism, Hinduism and reformist sects grew. Arnolds The Light of Asia (1879) was an adaptation of the Buddhist text Lalitavistara a narrative poem on the life, times and the philosophy of the Buddha. The Light of Asia was translated into several Indian languages. It inspired, top Indian leaders like B.R.Ambedkar, Jawaharlal Nehru and Rabindranath Tagore.
The World Parliament of Religions was held in Chicago in 1893, where Anagarika Dharmapala of Ceylon gave a lecture on the world’s debt to Buddhism. Hindu reform movements like Brahmo Samaj and Prarthana Samaj also helped create an interest in Buddhism.
Buddhist societies were formed in many parts of India. And these societies produced Buddhist literature. Tagore included Buddhist themes in his artistic productions. Even the Hindu Mahasabha patronized Buddhism though it maintained that Buddhism was only reformed Hinduism and not a separate religion. Interestingly, a century earlier, the orthodox Brahmin informants of the British orientalists had portrayed Buddhism as being antagonistic to Hinduism.
Hindu business houses also supported and propagated Buddhism, Sinha reveals. The Birlas were devout Hindus but they patronised Buddhism. Jugal Kishore Birla (1883-1967) financed 15 major Buddhist temples. He financially supported the Hindi translation of Pali texts. J,K.Birla was aided by even leftists like D.N.Kosambi and Rahul Sankritayayan .
There is, therefore, no dispute that Buddhist ideas and beliefs survived, albeit in the margins of religious thought in the Indian subcontinent. In that sense, Europe cannot be entirely credited for the discovery or revival of Buddhism in India, Sinha maintains.
Buddhism also inspired anti-caste movements, and efforts to build of an equalitarian society through the constitution of independent India.
After independence, Buddhism was grafted into State craft, nation building and international relations too. Now, politicians are using Buddhism to promote egalitarian and equalitarian ideas. Even orthodox, casteist forces, are co-opting Buddhism to interpret Brahminical Hindusim as containing within itself the Buddhist idea of castelessness and portray the Buddha as the 9 th. incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu..
India is using its Buddhist past to establish “civilizational” links with Buddhist countries and is promoting its Buddhist monuments to attract pilgrims as tourists.
Indeed, as Sinha says: “The Buddha has come to occupy the Centre-stage again.”
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