Archaeology of Religion in South Asia

Buddhist, Brahmanical and Jaina Religious Centres in Bihar and Bengal, c. AD 600–1200

Birendra Nath Prasad

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000416756
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Budismo

In the religious landscape of early medieval (c. AD 600-1200) Bihar and Bengal, poly-religiosity was generally the norm than an exception, which entailed the evolution of complex patterns of inter-religious equations. Buddhism, Brahmanism and Jainism not only coexisted but also competed for social patronage, forcing them to enter into complex interactions with social institutions and processes. Through an analysis of the published archaeological data, this work explores some aspects of the social history of Buddhist, Brahmanical and Jaina temples and shrines, and Buddhist st?pas and monasteries in early medieval Bihar and Bengal. This archaeological history of religions questions many 'established' textual reconstructions, and enriches our understanding of the complex issue of the decline of Buddhism in this area.

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CHAPTER 1
Introduction

Themes and Aims of Research

Religion is something which people not only contemplate and philosophize about, but also something they actually ‘do’.¹ The act of ‘doing’ religion by people, in many instances, includes making images of the deities in durable material; constructing shrines/temples for such deities; making pilgrimages to shrines/temples/monasteries; dedicating material resources for arranging for their worship on a sustained basis; and leaving a permanent record of their patronage in the form of epigraphic records. To summarize, ‘doing’ religion by people often leaves important material traces in the form of archaeological records and imparts a certain degree of materiality to abstract religious thoughts. These archaeological records often provide important database to reconstruct some aspects of the religious practices and processes of the past. A study of the religious processes and practices of the past through an analysis of archaeological data may confirm, complement or contradict the existing text-based studies.

Through an analysis of the published data, this work attempts an archaeological history of religious centres in early medieval (c. AD 600–1200) Bihar and Bengal. The area of study of this work consists of the Indian provinces of Bihar and West Bengal, and the Republic of Bangladesh. ‘Religious centres’ in this work stand for Brahmanical, Buddhist and Jaina temples and shrines, as well as for Buddhist stūpas and monasteries. The focus will be on Buddhist religious centres.

The intention is to study not only those religious centres whose structural remains have been found in archaeological explorations and excavations, but also those religious centres whose past existence is indicated by the presence of loose stone sculptures.² By an ‘archaeological history’ of religious centres in early medieval Bihar and Bengal, it is basically intended to analyse the following issues:

• (a) The archaeological context of the area in which religious centres emerged, functioned and declined;
• (b) The archaeological data left behind by the religious centres with particular reference to their support systems and patterns of engagements with their devotees; and
• (c) The ritual and cultic developments taking place within the religious centres as discernible in the archaeological data.

The first section will try to analyse how did religious centres interact with the social-economic and cultic processes in the locale in which they emerged, functioned and declined. In the second and third sections, main emphasis is on tracing the dialogues taking place within the religious centres, but here too, the emphasis has been on analysing the social history of these developments.

So far, the focus has been generally on a single religious system of either Bihar or Bengal, generally from an art-historical perspective. A better approach may be to study religious centres as important elements of the overall social matrix, as institutions in dynamic interaction with other societal institutions and processes, acting and reacting with them, influencing them and getting influenced by them in turn. In the earlier reconstructions of social history of these religious centres, emphasis has been on literary sources, and insight from archaeological data has been largely neglected. This is despite the emphasizing of the need to correlate literary and archaeological data by many historians. R.S Sharma, for example, has emphasized the need to ‘marry’ history and archaeology for a proper understanding of religious processes of the past.³ In the case of early medieval Bihar and Bengal, this remains a sad desideratum.

It is important to know why such a big area (Bihar and Bengal) has been taken up for for research here. A fundamental reason stems from the very nature of the present state of our main data base: early medieval archaeology. At the present state of archaeological research, in which, one will largely agree with B.D. Chattopadhyaya, ‘practically nothing is known of what is meant by “early medieval” archaeology’,⁴ studying a bigger area assumes the form of a compulsion to arrive at certain generalizations.

Other reasons stem from some developments in the early medieval period. One of the most important developments was the evolution of ‘regions with their distinct cultural personalities’.⁵ It has been argued that this emergence of ‘regions with their distinct cultural personalities’ was facilitated by a number of factors: agrarian expansion, state formation and the spread of varṇa-jāti ideology in the areas that had hitherto remained peripheral to the middle and upper Ganga valley as well as some developments in the sphere of religion. In some significant studies, the role of Brahmanical temples and immigrant Brahmins in hastening the process of state formation and its consolidation, as well as the legitimation of new political elites in the hitherto peripheral areas, have been highlighted.⁶ How does the pattern, especially the functional role of religious centres, unfold when we move to Bengal from Bihar? Much of Bihar was, doubtlessly, one of the core areas in the early historic period. Bengal, on the other hand, is believed to have been a peripheral area in the same period in a significant section of existing scholarship.⁷ Do we also see functional differences in the role of religious centres during the early medieval period as we move from Bihar to Bengal? How does archaeological data reflect on this issue?

In some aspects, Bihar and much of Bengal share many similarities, and in some other aspects, their historical trajectories are quite different. To have an idea of the elements of similarity, one may enumerate many things. Geographical proximity – a situation in which there is practically no geographical barrier between the Middle Ganga Plains and the Lower Ganga Plains – is probably the single biggest factor. These two valleys of the Ganga are connected through an intricate network of rivers, which facilitates easy communications. It was probably due to this reason that major political powers which had control in either part of the valley of the Ganga carried out expansion in the other part. Historical examples of this sort are provided by the Mauryas, the Guptas, the Pālas and the Senas. In the early medieval phase, larger parts of Bihar and Bengal were subject to the rule of the same dynasty under the Pālas and the Senas for at least 400 years. Much of Bihar and Bengal shared many cultural idioms (iconography, art, etc.) as well in this phase. Similarly, many Pāla period Buddhist monasteries in Bihar and Bengal functioned as closely linked institutions. Yet, despite these elements of similarity, we see some fundamental differences. By the end of this period, Bengal supposedly evolved into a distinct ‘cult region’.⁸ And, despite its supposed evolution as a ‘cult region’, we see a fundamental cultural shift – massive conversion to Islam in the areas that now constitute Bangladesh – that took place after the early medieval phase.⁹ Why was this cultural shift made possible? Was it due to the ‘fact’ that ‘in much of eastern Delta, rice agriculture and Islam were introduced simultaneously’,¹⁰ as eastern Bengal ‘experienced a transition to settled agriculture at the time that Islam took hold among common folk’?¹¹ Or was it due to some particular aspects of the social history of the early medieval religious centres of this area? How does archaeological data reflect on this issue? To have a fuller understanding of these issues, it is imperative to contextualize the developments in early medieval Bengal in the backdrop of the developments in early medieval Bihar. This work hopes to be a humble attempt in that direction.

Review of Literature

In the reconstruction of religious processes in early medieval Bihar and Bengal, a common tendency has been to rely on literary sources and neglect the insights from archaeological sources. If archaeological data is used, generally the emphasis happens to be on tracing the stylistic evolution of sculptures;¹² or on tracing the architectural evolution of excavated Buddhist and Brahmanical religious centres, but generally in isolation from the religious and socio-economic developments taking place in the broader area where these religious centres emerged, functioned and declined.¹³ Generally, the emphasis has been on ‘monumental’ religious centres: Buddhist monastic centres or big Brahmanical or Jaina temples. Not much attention has been paid to the more modest religious centres that dotted a significant part of the landscape. This neglect is despite the realization that religious centres functioned as parts of a hierarchical network.¹⁴ Not much attempt has been made to situate the ‘monument’ in the backdrop of socio-economic and cultic processes in a region or sub-region as reflected through archaeological data.

Another common tendency in a major section of existing studies on this theme has been to study the developments in Buddhism, Brahmanism and Jainism in isolation from one another. That may not be a holistic approach. We have taken into account all major institutional religions of this period and we have also tried to see the developments taking place in Bengal in the backdrop of the same taking place in Bihar. Attempt has been made to analyse the cultic developments taking place in the ‘monumental’ religious centres in the backdrop of socio-economic and cultic processes in the area where they emerged, functioned and declined.

The need for the kind of study attempted in this book stems from some significant gaps in existing scholarship related to the subject. In the context of early medieval Bihar, the focus in available writings is generally on tracing the archaeological personality of select portions of Bihar or on the art of some Buddhist monastic centres mainly on the basis of collating data from the available publications. In this category of works, we may include A.K. Singh (Archaeology of Magadha Region, Ramanand Vidya Bhavan, Delhi, 1991); B.K. Sinha (Archaeology of North Bihar, Ramanand Vidya Bhavan, Delhi, 1999); R.C. Prasad (Archaeology of Champa and Vikramashila, Ramanand Vidya Bhavan, Delhi, 1987); B.M. Kumar (Archaeology of Pataliputra and Nalanda, Ramanand Vidya Bhavan, Delhi, 1987); Kumar Anand (Archaeology of Buxar, Bhojpur and Rohtas Regions, Ramanand Vidya Bhavan, Delhi, 1995); B.N. Mishra (Nālandā, vols. I-III, D.K. Printworld, Delhi, 1998); Kiran Sahay (Vikramaśilā: Itihāsa Evam Purātattva, Bauddha Sanskriti Kendra, Patna, 1998); L.B. Swarnakar (The Historical Geography of Ancient Angadesa, Indian Publishers’ Distributors, Delhi, 2007); Rajiv Kumar Sinha and Om Prakash Pandey (eds), Aṅga Sanskriti: Vividha Āyāma, Indian Book Market, Bhagalpur, 2006; Ramnivas Singh (Pāṭaliputra: Purātātvika Avalokana, Janaki Prakashan, Patna, 2008) and Rashmi Sinha (Uttara Bihār mein Purātattva kā Udbhava aur Vikāsa, Janaki Prakashan, Patna, 2010). Even when new database is generated through archaeological fieldwork, we notice a reluctance to trace the shifts in the areas of occupation, if any; possible changes in the nature and extent of archaeological assemblage; and the location of the religious centres in the overall settlement matrix. We may note this trend in B.K. Chowdhary (The Arch-aeological Gazetteer of Vaishali District, K.P. Jayaswal Research Institute, Patna, 2015; The Archaeological Gazetteer of Nalanda District, K.P. Jayaswal Research Institute, Patna, 2015).

In Bengal, reconstructions of the social history of religion for the whole of early medieval Bengal have generally relied on literary sources or literary sources in association with epigraphic sources. Archaeology has not formed the main prism through which the social history of religions is reconstructed. Available studies of this kind include Kunal Chakrabarti (Religious Process: The Purāṇas and the Making of a Regional Tradition, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2001); Rama Chatterjee (Religion in Bengal during Pāla and Sena Times: Mainly on the Basis of Epigraphic and Archaeological Sources, Punthi Pustaka, Calcutta, 1985); J. Bagchi (The History and Culture of the Palas of Bengal and Bihar: Cir. 750 A.D.-1200 ...