South Asian Buddhism

A Survey

Stephen C. Berkwitz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781135689834
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Bouddhisme

South Asian Buddhism presents a comprehensive historical survey of the full range of Buddhist traditions throughout South Asia from the beginnings of the religion up to the present. Starting with narratives on the Buddha's life and foundational teachings from ancient India, the book proceeds to discuss the rise of Buddhist monastic organizations and texts among the early Mainstream Buddhist schools. It considers the origins and development of Mahayana Buddhism in South Asia, surveys the development of Buddhist Tantra in South Asia and outlines developments in Buddhism as found in Sri Lanka and Nepal following the decline of the religion in India. Berkwitz also importantly considers the effects of colonialism and modernity on the revivals of Buddhism across South Asia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

South Asian Buddhism offers a broad, yet detailed perspective on the history, culture, and thought of the various Buddhist traditions that developed in South Asia. Incorporating findings from the latest research on Buddhist texts and culture, this work provides a critical, historically based survey of South Asian Buddhism that will be useful for students, scholars, and general readers.

1

Formations:

The Buddha and his Dharma

The World of the Buddha

The Renunciants of Ancient India

The Buddha and his Dharma

After the Buddha’s Awakening

The Noble Eightfold Path

The Four Noble Truths

The Establishment of the Saṅgha

The Buddha’s Early Rivals

Remembering and Representing the Buddha

Biographies of the Buddha

Symbols and Images of the Buddha

The World of the Buddha

The ancient Indic world in which Gautama Buddha lived and established the Buddhist path was characterized by dramatic social change. While various Buddhist traditions and scholars give different estimates about when the Buddha lived, recent scholarly opinion suggests he lived some time between the fifth and the fourth centuries BCE (Bechert 2004: 82). Some Buddhist traditions on the other hand have typically dated the Buddha around one to two hundred years earlier. Regardless of the uncertainty surrounding the dates of the Buddha’s life, the historical context in which he lived appears clearer. Historians commonly speak of the era beginning around the sixth century BCE as a second wave of urbanization and the expansion of settlements around the Gangetic Plains in Northern India (Thapar 2002: 137–9). The first wave of urbanization in the Indian subcontinent is thought to have occurred much earlier when the ancient urban centers of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro arose in the Punjab and Sind regions in what scholars often call the Indus Valley Civilization around 2600 BCE. Archaeological evidence of fortified walls and urban planning in these sites speak to an ancient form of city living prior to the first recitations and compilations of Vedic texts by (Indo-)Aryans. The decline of these prehistoric cities occurred around 1800 BCE for reasons not adequately understood.

The period roughly corresponding with between 1800 BCE and 600 BCE is often called the Vedic period of ancient Indian history. It is a period marked by the development of royal and priestly institutions based on the orally transmitted Sanskrit texts of the Hindu Veda. The Aryans who migrated into Northwest and Northern India during the second millennium BCE were nomads who traveled with livestock. Along with cattle, they brought with them certain cultural and religious forms that would prove to be determinative for the development of ancient Indian civilization. These forms included an archaic form of the Sanskrit language as exemplified in the oral scriptural collection called the Veda; a patrilineal, tripartite system of social organization organized around the roles performed by priests, warriors, and food-producers; an elaborate ritual system of sacrifices; and the worship of a pantheon of invisible deities (Larson 1995: 58). The priests, or brāhmaṇas (anglicized as “Brahmins”), occupied an elite position in this early, village-based society, as they were the ones who recited and preserved the Sanskrit hymns that were uttered during the performance of sacrifices to the gods.

The Brahmins’ ritual role was largely an exclusive one. Other members of this ancient Aryan society were deemed unqualified to perform the liturgical roles of the priests. The Brahmins were the ones who claimed the ability to consecrate kings with divine power. They conducted the ritual transactions between the gods in heaven and the humans on earth. And they placed themselves at the top of a social hierarchy that was endowed with the scriptural authority of Vedic creation myths, essentially claiming that the varṇa system of social classes in ancient India naturally evolved with the creation of the physical world (Smith 1994: 58–60). This system of social classification grew and became more complex over time. But by the middle of the first millennium BCE, the varṇa system comprised the Brahmin priests at the top, the kṣatriya class of kings and nobles second, the vaiṣya class consisting of providers of food and goods third, and the lowest śūdra class of those who were servants to the higher classes. This religious system placed a premium on social status and stability. The Vedic texts first used to promulgate and support this worldview depict a village-based society that subsisted on pastoral and agricultural activities.

At the center of this ancient Indic world was a Brahmanical theology that emphasized the potency of priestly rites and sacred mantras, or chants. Rites and chants were performed together by priests during sacrifices made to a sacred fire believed capable of consuming the offering and transporting its subtle essence up to the heavenly realm where the gods would partake of it. Sacrificial rites were held on a small scale at the domestic household level, but over time larger and more complex sacrifices were performed by groups of priests in public ceremonies wherein only the higher social classes could participate (Thapar 2002: 128). Brahmin priests maintained that the ritual Vedic sacrifice, or yajña, replicated the primordial cosmic principle behind the creation of the world. The details for this ritual—whereby offerings of milk, honey, clarified butter (ghee), and animals were made into an open-air fire altar while Sanskrit mantras were recited and a sacred, hallucinogenic drink called soma was drunk—were the exclusive privilege of the Brahmins. The cost of the items and personnel needed for its performance could be borne only by the upper classes. Therefore, the performance of the sacrifice tended to increase the status and importance of the priests who performed them and the nobles who sponsored them.

As long as ancient Aryan society was culturally uniform and rurally based, the sacrificial theology and ritual system of the Brahmin priests held sway. The search for better pastures, arable land, and goods, however, led groups of Aryans to migrate towards the east and settle in the fertile Gangetic Plains. This cultural shift that occurred sometime around the eighth and seventh centuries BCE brought Aryans into greater contact with other non-Aryan peoples. At the same time, the development of iron tools and techniques of wet-rice cultivation yielded larger surpluses of food, which in turn spurred trade and other occupations that supported the increased agricultural activity (Thapar 2002: 116–17). The rise of markets, trade, and coins began to take place in the sixth century BCE, setting into motion the second wave of urbanization in ancient India. The political and economic expansions in this region set the stage for rapid and dramatic changes in religious life. In contrast to many Brahmanical texts that appear to be set in village environments with tribal economies, early Buddhist texts depict large cities with diverse economies that illustrate early methods of urban trade and production (Bailey and Mabbett 2003: 58–61).

The relationship between urbanization and the rise of Buddhism in the Gangetic Plains is far from clear. Various theories abound on whether the Buddha’s teachings gained popularity because they supported the values of new urban groups or because they rejected the materialist values of these new surroundings (Bailey and Mabbett 2003: 15–20). Clearly, the economic growth in this era may have facilitated the patronage of a new mendicant group of Buddhist monks. And the new urban settings may have diminished the influence of Brahmanical rites and traditions, providing a space for heterodox movements to emerge and flourish. Urban living, moreover, generated new economies that contributed to the rise of a greater level of individualism in this ancient period. Accordingly, an ascetic group like the Buddhists was a voluntary religious organization that needed to recruit its members from those who rejected the ascribed religious and cultural identities that they would have otherwise been expected to uphold (Olivelle 1992: 32–3). It is significant and not surprising then that early texts seem to indicate that a large proportion of those who joined the monkhood led by the Buddha did so in cities (Gokhale 1980: 74).

Urban areas were thus fertile grounds for the growth of new religious movements like Buddhism that departed from the Brahmanical traditions of sacrificial rites and a social hierarchy determined by birth. The Brahmanical religion was primarily a religion of householders, and it addressed the conditions of village life governed chiefly by agricultural cycles and family relationships. There is even evidence that Hindu Brahmins in the late Vedic period had a distaste for city life. Aside from the fact that late-Vedic texts rarely give mention to cities and the particular occupations that sprang up in them, it appears that urbanization and its concomitant political institutions were a development wholly independent of Vedic culture and were thus seen as a source of impurity to be avoided (Bronkhorst 2007: 251–5). Cities provided new avenues for earning wealth and a greater degree of social interaction across social classes, both of which undermined the stable social hierarchy implied in the Brahmanical ideology. Thus with Brahmins slow to embrace the urban centers of the Gangetic Plains, the Buddhists and other heterodox ascetic groups were attracted to cities where they received the interest and support of merchants, craftsmen, prostitutes, and other city-dwellers.

The Renunciants of Ancient India

Early Indian Buddhists appeared along with other ascetic movements that sprang up in the middle of the first millennium BCE. In contrast to the priestly Brahmins who were concerned with the performance of sacrificial rites and the maintenance of a harmonious social order in the world of householders, the ascetic śramaṇas renounced the householder life to adopt a mendicant, celibate lifestyle deemed conducive to gaining knowledge for liberation from the cycle of repeated births and deaths in the world (saṃsāra). The rejection of Brahmanical norms and rites placed many of these recluses outside of the dominant cultural system in ancient India. Generally speaking, the śramaṇas refused to recognize the legitimacy of the sacrifices performed by the Brahmins in order to regenerate and sustain the cosmic order, as well as to ensure divine blessings and benefits for their patrons. Such recluses had no interest in the maintenance of the world, a world seen to be less real and more insufferable than whatever form of existence may lie outside of it. Instead, these recluses renounced the social world that under the influence of Brahmins valued power, prosperity, and procreation. They pursued paths designed to free themselves of social attachments and worldly existence.

Many of the Śramaṇic groups that existed around the middle of the first millennium BCE disappeared from history and are unknown to us today. It does appear, however, that during this period in the Gangetic Plains a number of new ideas about karma, rebirth (saṃsāra), and liberation (mokṣa) had taken root without the prior influence of the Vedic religion of the Aryans. Whereas the Brahmanical religion of the early Vedic period remarked on an afterlife whereby one travels either to be rewarded in a heavenly “World of the Fathers” or to be punished in a “House of Clay,” the expansion of the Aryans eastwards appears to have led to some intermingling of social groups and the gradual adoption of a spiritual ideology that emphasized attaining liberation from saṃsāra. This soteriological stance became accepted into the Brahmanical religion through the medium of the Upaniṣads, a collection of texts composed and edited over several centuries beginning around the seventh or sixth century BCE. The Upaniṣads were incorporated in the Hindu Veda as the section wherein knowledge is the means to salvation (jñānakaṇḍa), in contrast to the older section on ritual performance (karmakaṇḍa).

What the renunciants had in common was a conviction that a path of ascetic and celibate living away from the usual family ties and social obligations held the key to liberation from a nearly interminable cycle of rebirth. A higher state of knowledge and bliss was thought to await all those who could transcend the path of repeated existence in the world. However, these same śramaṇas were distinguished by different views on the reasons for the predicament of bondage and suffering in saṃsāra, as well as the means to attain liberation from this condition. One view, represented by some Upaniṣadic authors, held that the human bondage in saṃsāra was due to a lack of understanding, but this woeful state could be overcome by the development of knowledge (Olivelle 1992: 39). Another view, exemplified by the Jains, held that mental and physical activity was the primary cause for continued rebirth (Bronkhorst 2007: 24). Yet another view, one that would be later articulated by the Buddhists, identified mental intentions in the form of desire as responsible for rebirth and the suffering that goes along with it. To be sure, other mendicant groups came up with their own particular views on the causes and solutions for the problem of rebirth. All of these śramaṇas, however, challenged the traditional Brahmanical orthodoxy, which held that priestly rites and the life of a householder were supremely valuable and meaningful.

Those renunciants who remained within the Brahmanical fold by acknowledging the authority of Vedic scriptures did not reject the traditional sacrificial rites entirely. They instead chose to reinterpret its significance by utilizing the image of the sacrificial fire to develop a theology of renunciation whereby yoga was reinterpreted as an internal sacrifice and the perfection of the ritual itself (Olivelle 1992: 68–9). In essence, Hindu renunciants retained the symbolism and categories of sacrifice to invest their ascetic practices with relevance and authority. And the larger Brahmanical tradition sought to lessen the threats they posed to itself by incorporating the ascetic’s quest into the final stage of life (āśrama), whereby the pursuit of individual liberation is postponed until after one has performed the duties of domestic sacrifices, raising a family, and contributing to the welfare of society. Other renunciants, however, refused to accept the Brahmanical ideology as normative. These groups, to which the Buddhists should be added, distanced themselves from the ritualized sacrifices of Brahmins, protesting both the violence inherent in sacrificing animals and the social dominance of an elite priestly class.

The development of groups of wandering recluses who begged for food and sought liberation from the mundane and often disagreeable world of repeated births constituted a direct challenge to the religion purveyed by most Brahmins. It may have represented a distinctly new era of religious expression in post-Vedic India. Or it may have been the result of encounters and disputes among different religious groups in the more heterogeneous culture east of the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers—what Johannes Bronkhorst calls “Greater Magadha” (Bronkhorst 2007: 2–4). Regardless, after the sixth century BCE, the Gangetic Plains would become the center of new religious movements that repudiated much of what the Brahmanical religion deemed necessary and normative. The historical Buddha was certainly one of the leaders in this regard.

The Buddha and his Dharma

Numerous surveys of Buddhism begin their accounts with the birth of Siddhārtha Gautama, the Indian noble who at the age of 35 attained his Awakening (or “Enlightenment”) and became known as the Buddha (or the “Awakened One”). While it is true that the narrative of the Buddha’s life story would come to occupy a central place in the devotional expressions and literary recollections of Buddhists in ancient India, these biographic accounts appear somewhat later after older discursive texts that focus on the Buddha’s teaching career. Indeed, the construction of a complete biography of the Buddha’s life first took place at least two to three hundred years after his death with the composition of the Mahāvastu. Brief episodes and anecdotes from his youth appear in some older canonical texts, which can be combined and arranged to produce a fairly coherent life story of the Buddha (cf. Ñāṇamoli 1992). But since this story gains significance due to the condition of Buddhahood that Siddhārtha Gautama attained and then expounded upon to others, it makes sense to begin with the Buddha’s Awakening. The Mahāvagga (Great Chapter) in the Pāli Vinaya, or book of monastic regulations, adopts this same formula when it opens its narrative account with the Buddha sitting under the Bodhi Tree, having just attained his Awakening. It is here too that we shall begin to recount how the story of the Buddha influenced the development of Buddhism in South Asia and beyond.

The newly awakened Buddha is said to have spent one week in meditation under the Bodhi Tree—a species of fig tree (ficus religiosa) with heart-shaped leaves that has apparently long been associated with religious worship in South Asia. It is during this time that he reflected on Dependent Co-Arising (Skt: pratītyasamutpāda/P: paṭiccasamuppāda)—a notion concerning the mutually conditioned rise and fall of all forms of existence that directly led to his Awakening. This doctrine, distinctive to Buddhism, affirms that (1) ignorance gives rise to certain karmic dispositions; (2) those same karmic dispositions give rise to consciousness; (3) consciousness gives rise to “name and form,” or the combined mental and physical basis for existence; (4) name and form give rise to the six sense fields of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and discursive thinking; (5) the six sense-fields give rise to contact with particular mental and physical stimuli; (6) contact then gives rise to feelings that are positive, negative, or neutral; (7) feeling gives ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Map of South Asian Buddhist sites
• 1. Formations: the Buddha and his Dharma
• 2. Foundations: Mainstream Buddhist texts and communities
• 3. Furcations: origins and development of the Mahāyāna
• 4. Consolidations: medieval systems of thought and practice
• 5. Reappraisals: later developments in the South Asian Buddhist world
• 6. Revivals: Buddhism and modernity in South Asia
• Appendix
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index