Theravada Buddhism

A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo

Richard F. Gombrich

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134217175
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Written by the leading authority on Theravada Buddhism, this up-dated edition takes into account recent research to include the controversies over the date of the Buddha and current social and political developments in Sri Lanka. Gombrich explores the legacy of the Buddha's predecessors and the social and religious contexts against which Buddhism has developed and changed throughout history, demonstrating above all, how it has always influenced and been influenced by its social surroundings in a way which continues to this day.

1 Introduction

A. INTRODUCTORY INFORMATION

Buddhists consider that their religion has Three Jewels*: the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha. They begin any ritual or religious ceremony by saying three times that they ‘take refuge’ in these Three Jewels, which are therefore also called the Three Refuges. Indeed, the taking of the Refuges is what defines a Buddhist.

When they take refuge in the Buddha, Buddhists are thinking first and foremost of Gotama Buddha. Buddha is a title, meaning ‘Enlightened’ or ‘Awakened’. Gotama was the family name of a man who was born on the Nepalese side of the modern Indian-Nepali border, early in the fifth century bce, and died at the age of 80. According to later tradition, his personal name was Siddhattha. At the age of 35 he attained Enlightenment by realizing the Truth, the Dhamma. Outsiders see him as the founder of Buddhism; for Buddhists the matter is slightly more complicated. As they see it, the Truth is eternal, but not always realized. Time has no beginning or end but goes through vast cycles. Every now and again there arises in the world a religious genius, a Buddha, who has the infinite wisdom to comprehend the Truth and the infinite compassion to preach it to the suffering world, so that others too may attain Enlightenment. Gotama is the most recent Teacher in the infinite series of Buddhas. He was human, not divine, and is no longer personally accessible to us.

(The last sentence would not be accepted by Mahāyāna Buddhists. In this book the terms Buddhism and Buddhist refer primarily to the Theravāda tradition. Not everything said is correct for all Buddhist traditions, e.g. those of Tibet and the Far East. About all Buddhists few valid generalizations are possible.)

Every Buddha realizes and preaches the Truth. But not all of them ensure that that Truth will long be available to men. By preaching a code of monastic discipline, Gotama Buddha founded an Order, a Sangha. This institution not only consists of those who have decided to devote their lives to striving for Enlightenment; it also preserves the memory of the Buddha’s Teaching. Thus, in a metaphor central to Buddhism, the Buddha is the great physician, the Dhamma is the remedy he prescribes, the Sangha is the nurse who administers that remedy.

The word Dhamma is variously translated into English. In so far as it is what the Buddhas teach, the intellectual content of Buddhism, it is aptly translated ‘Doctrine’. This doctrine both describes and prescribes, so it is both ‘Truth’ and ‘Law’.

When a modern Buddhist takes refuge in the Sangha he is thinking primarily of monks. In Theravāda Buddhist countries – Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand are the main ones – most villages contain monasteries housing at least one monk, a man with shaven head wearing yellow robes. However, the term Sangha is ambiguous. In early texts it was used to refer to all who had accepted certain fundamental Buddhist doctrines and signalled their acceptance by taking the Three Refuges. Another traditional reference is to all who have attained a certain degree of sanctity, so that they will be Enlightened within seven lifetimes at the most; they are technically called Stream Enterers. Probably this latter meaning, the ‘ideal Sangha’, and the first meaning originally referred to exactly the same people, the community of professed Buddhists. However, the commoner use of the term is, and has long been, to refer to the ‘conventional Sangha’, namely those ordained. Unless otherwise stated, that will be the use of ‘Sangha’ in this book. For some 1500 years the Order contained monks, nuns and novices, both male and female. But early in the present millennium the female ordination tradition was lost. In Theravāda countries today there are some women who lead cloistered lives and behave like nuns, but whether any of them can strictly be considered members of the Sangha is a hotly contested issue .

If Theravāda Buddhists want to refer to Buddhism not just as a doctrine but as a phenomenon in history, a whole religion, they usually call it the Sāsana, the Teaching. For example, where English speakers might talk of the welfare of Buddhism, they would talk of the welfare of the Sāsana. Gotama Buddha founded the present Sāsana.

Theravāda is the branch of Buddhism now preserved in Sri Lanka and parts of continental southeast Asia. (As will be explained (pp. 111-13), it is misleading to call it a sect; one could call it a denomination.) The term means ‘Doctrine of the Elders’; the elders in question are the senior monks, who preserve tradition. The title thus claims conservatism. An adherent of Theravāda is called a Theravādin. Theravāda reached Ceylon from India in or very near 250 bce. For more than a thousand years thereafter it existed mainly in Ceylon and southeast India. In the eleventh century it went from Ceylon to Burma; over the next two centuries it diffused into the areas which are now Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. In all Theravādin countries there are minority populations who are for the most part not Buddhists; Theravāda has been the religion of the majority community (Sinhalese, Burmese, Thai, etc.) and generally enjoyed state patronage and official status, except of course under colonial rule. In Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand Theravāda Buddhism is today in some sense the established religion and enjoys widespread support and patronage. The communist victories of 1975 virtually obliterated the Sangha in both Laos and Cambodia. During the Democratic Kampuchea regime (1975–79) of Pol Pot high-ranking monks were massacred, the rest defrocked. Then in the early 1980s leaders of both countries began to recognize that this was alienating the peasantry. So, hoping to strengthen the sense of nationhood, they instituted a new, centrally-regulated form of Theravāda. At the same time, Party leaders tended to turn to Buddhism for consolation in their declining years. The Sangha began to revive, and when Sihanouk returned as King of Cambodia in 1993 the two traditional monastic fraternities were re-established and ordinations increased. But the level of Buddhist learning in both countries has yet to recover.¹ However, Theravāda is showing new life, not only in the western and developed world – Theravādin monasteries have been founded in several countries of western Europe, in North America and in Australia – but also in non-communist countries of Asia: Nepal, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. Its arrival in these countries is, however, so recent that it is too soon to say whether it can strike roots and command popular support.

Hallmarks of Theravāda Buddhism are the use of Pali as its main sacred language and dependence on the Pali version of the Buddhist Canon as its sacred scripture. The Buddhist terms in this book are in Pali, unless otherwise stated. The word Pali originally meant ‘(canonical) text’; its use to designate the language of the Theravādin canonical texts seems not to antedate the eighteenth century. Pali is an ancient derivative of Sanskrit and quite close to it. Thus some words which may be more familiar to the reader in their Sanskrit forms turn up in this book with small phonetic changes: for Sanskrit Dharma, karman and nirvan.a Pali has Dhamma, kamma and nibbana. Buddha and Sangha, on the other hand, are the same in both languages. (However, in chapter 2 most Indian words are in Sanskrit, as appropriate to the subject matter.)

Pali literature is quite extensive, but very little of it is what we would call secular. So far as we know, it has all been composed by members of the Sangha. The Canon itself is voluminous. In Pali it is called the TiPiṭaka, which means that it consists of ‘three baskets’, i.e. three collections of texts: the Vinaya Piṭaka, which contains the vinaya, i.e. the rules or ‘discipline’ of the Sangha; the Sutta Piṭaka, which contains the Buddha’s sermons and some religious poetry and other miscellaneous texts - this is far the largest ‘basket’; and the Abhidhamma Piṭaka, which contains what is sometimes called ‘systematic philosophy’, a scholastic elaboration of doctrine, especially as regards the analysis of mind. Then there are the commentaries on the Canon, which probably consist largely of material compiled in ancient India, though in their present form they almost all come from Ceylon; and sub-commentaries and similar ancillary literature. Among this ancillary literature stands one monumental work, the Visuddhi-magga, The Path to Purity. It is a summary compendium of Theravadin doctrine, written in Ceylon in the early fifth century ce by Buddhaghosa, the monk who also put the most important commentaries in their final shape.

Perhaps the most notable Pali text which is quite independent of the Canon is the Mahavamsa, The Great Chronicle of Buddhism in Ceylon. Other Theravadin countries emulated the Mahavamsa and compiled chronicles of their own.

Not all the literature of Theravada Buddhism is in Pali. In late mediaeval Ceylon some Buddhist works were composed in Sanskrit. Far more important, popular religious literature has everywhere been composed in the local languages. Much of it is translated or paraphrased from the Pali or otherwise depends closely on the Canon for its subject matter, but there is also a fair amount of apocryphal literature.

The traditional English name of the country with which the latter half of this book is concerned is Ceylon. A new constitution in 1972 changed the official name of the country to Sri Lanka. These words are of course in the Sinhala language, and ‘Ceylon’ is presumably a corruption of them, as ‘Spain’ is a corruption of ‘España’. I have never understood therefore why ‘Sri Lanka’ should be used in English, let alone the barbarous adjective ‘Sri Lankan’ in place of ‘Ceylonese’; in English we do not call Spain ‘España’. However, I wish to offend no national susceptibilities, so I have tried to conform to the new usage and have called the country ‘Ceylon’ only when referring to periods before it officially shed that name. As will be explained below, the majority of the population of Sri Lanka have always been Sinhalese. Their language can also be called ‘Sinhalese’ but I have preferred to refer to it as Sinhala.

The names of Sinhalese monks, which they acquire at ordination, have two parts: the name of their village of origin, followed by a Pali given name. Modern bureaucracy often reduces the name of the village to an initial. Sinhalese tend to refer to monks by the village name, but not consistently; I have chosen the latter (Pali) name, shorn of honorif-ics, for bare reference, e.g. I refer to the Ven. Hikkaḍuve Sumangala as Sumangala.

Two final points of usage. When I write vinaya I refer to monastic discipline, whereas Vinaya refers to the text, the Vinaya Piṭaka. When I write nikāya in referring to a monastic ordination tradition (see p. 112) I am using the common noun, whereas Nikāya is being used as part of the proper names of such groups; neither has anything to do with the Nikāya which is a body of texts, a sub-division of the Sutta Piṭaka.

I must now turn to the theoretical issues raised by writing a social history of Buddhism. Any reader who is not interested in them and wishes to take my interpretive framework on trust can turn straight to p. 18.

B. A SOCIAL HISTORY OF BUDDHISM?

To attempt to write the social history of a religion is a problematic enterprise. Such an enterprise has never been undertaken outside the modern West; it smacks of a secularized society. Most people in the world do not regard religion as a fit subject for empirical study. What they want to know about a religion is whether the beliefs it inculcates are true or false, whether the conduct it recommends is right or wrong. Since religions other than one’s own are wrong - or at least wrong for oneself - to study them would be an irrelevance or worse. Since one’s own religion represents the truth, and truth is timeless, to imply that that truth has only been reached through historical circumstance and that belief in it may be similarly conditioned seems likewise sacrilegious, or at best foolish.

The classic formulation of this problem is that of Edward Gibbon:

The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.

Our curiosity is naturally prompted to inquire by what means the Christian faith obtained so remarkable a victory over the established religions of the earth. To this inquiry, an obvious but satisfactory answer may be returned; that it was owing to the convincing evidence of the doctrine itself, and to the ruling providence of its great Author. But, as truth and reason seldom find so favourable a reception in the world, and as the wisdom of Providence frequently condescends to use the passions of the human heart, and the general circumstances of mankind, as instruments to execute its purpose; we may still be permitted, though with becoming submission, to ask not indeed what were the first, but what were the secondary causes of the rapid growth of the Christian church.²

Or the problem can be put in another way: if religion claims to explain the world, can we in the world explain religion?

This is not to say that religions necessarily lack historical awareness or concern. A religion which ascribes its origins to a human founder – like the three great world religions: Buddhism, Christianity and Islam – is intensely concerned with the biography of that founder, and above all with how he came to have access to the truth. A religion which sees itself as having a beginning in time also foresees its end (coterminous, perhaps, with the end of the world), though both beginning and end may be cyclically recurrent events in a timescale stretching beyond the limits of human imagination. Extending from a beginning to an already predicted end, the religion will thus have a course to run through history, and its adherents may chart its progress. Such religions tend to produce chronicles of their central institution, their church, for the health of that organization is the best measure of the health of the religion as a whole, an indicator whether it is duly proceeding towards apocalyptic climax or terminal decline. Since Hinduism is not a historical religion in this sense, for it has neither a historical founder nor a church, it is not surprising that for over a thousand years classical India produced no historiography. Historical writing in the Indian cultural area began (probably in the fourth century ce) in the Buddhist monasteries of Ceylon with chronicles of the Buddhist monastic order, the Sangha, in that island state.

To such church chronicles Christianity and the other monotheistic religions offer many parallels. Unlike Indian Buddhism, they are also rich in hagiography, the lives of individual saints whose example should inspire the faithful. (Hagiography is not unknown to Buddhism, but the character of the religion makes it lend itself less to personality cults.) In the West – I am talking of the pre-modern West – such historical religious literature sees God as the ultimate cause of all events, the motor behind history. (I ignore here the problematic role of the Devil; to include him would not affect my argument.) God is traditionally conceived to work through individuals. On the human plane, it is individual men and women whose characters and decisions influence the lives of others, and such influence is most commonly perceived as taking place through the conscious decision of the influenced. An individual who has great power to influence others in this way (as against power to coerce them) is said to be endowed with God’s grace, charisma. If God has thus given someone the power to influence others – for example, to convert them – no further explanation of that influence can be required.

This is not what is meant by social history. A social historian works on the principle that historical events cannot be explained purely as the results, let alone the intended results, of conscious decisions taken by isolated individuals; this, however, leaves open the question whether they are the work of God (or some otherwise named transcendent, autonomous force).

Both of these points need to be amplified, the latter first. When religious people encounter an attempt to explain their beliefs or customs in social terms they often suspect that this is but a cover for an attempt either to prove them wrong (as may be done by a missionary from another religion) or to relativize all religious beliefs and values. Moreover, their suspicions are often justified. But they need not be so. To show the circumstances under which a belief or value comes to be held is not to invalidate it. Of this the history of science furnishes innumerable examples. We now know the speed of light. It could be discovered only after certain other advances had been made, advances both conceptual (most basically, that light is a thing which travels) and technical (so that its speed could be measured). What has been discovered is an objective fact: it was true even before anyone knew it and will still be true even if no one alive knows it. But that does not mean that we cannot write a history of how it came to be discovered or ask, for instance, who now knows it or does not know it or refuses to believe in it, and why.

Similarly, religions make various statements, such as ‘The good go to heaven when they die’ or ‘There is a blissful state, the extinction of greed, hatred and delusion, which men can attain in this life’, and to investigate how these statements came first to be made and who has believed or believes in them is not to impugn (or to support) their veracity. In the first and most successful popular western book about

Buddhism, T.W. Rhys Davids begins by remarking that Buddhists ‘far outnumber’ Christians, immediately adding, ‘From such summary statements, however, great misconceptions may possibly arise, quite apart from the fact that numbers are no test of truth, but rather the contrary.’³ (I suspect that the last four words are a playful echo of Gibbon.) Not all the truth claims made by religions can be correct, because some of them conflict; but beyond that the empirical investigator has nothing to say and need pose no threat. My view is that, like ethical propositions, metaphysical propositions cannot be refuted (let alone confirmed) by empirical evidence, but that does not mean that they are meaningless or valueless. I hold that ‘One should respect people’s religious opinions’ is a valid ethical proposition regardless of who holds it or why.

Nevertheless, a social account of religion cannot command general attention unless its author aims for a certain metaphysical neutrality. If his apparatus of causal explanation depends on a particular metaphysic, so that, for example, he explains all misfortunes such as famine, disease and war as merely the results of bad karma or God’s punishment of sinners, he cannot command credence among those who do not accept the metaphysic. Worse, he cannot enter intellectual debate about his explanations and it is hard to see what criticism, let alone refutation, he would accept. His account may edify believers but it cannot contribute to general human understanding.

It is true that in so far a...