Review: Giuseppe Vignato & Satomi Hiyama, with Appendices by Petra Kieffer-Pülz & Yoko Taniguchi, Traces of the Sarvāstivādins in the Buddhist Monasteries of Kucha, New Delhi, Dev Publishers & Distributors (Leipzig Kucha Studies 3), 2022, xxiv + 438 pages, 146 ill. – ISBN 978-93-87496-75-0 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Early Indian Buddhist Monasteries: Bhaja, Bedsa, and Karla from 200 BCE to 700 CE
International Journal of Buddhist Thought and Culture, 2023
I became a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order 45 years ago. Since then, I founded a charity to fund social work in India, I co-ran the London Buddhist Centre and I co-founded the North London Buddhist Centre. I am currently the President of the North London Buddhist Centre. My academic interests are the early development of Buddhism in India and its spread out of the subcontinent. I studied the historical development of Buddhist traditions as well as the archaeology of Buddhist art and architecture at the School of Oriental and African Studies. My special interest is in the rock-cut Buddhist monasteries of Western India, since they have the best-preserved remains of early Buddhist monasticism. Of these, I chose Bhaja, Bedsa and Karla for the subject of my PhD research, because their close proximity to each other enabled me to make a detailed study of local Buddhist history from the regional physical remains. I finished this study and graduated in 2022.
2021
Julia Shaw, 2021. The Late History of Buddhist Monasticism and the Unfolding of a Multi-Religious Landscape in Central India: patterns from the Sanchi Survey Project, Paper given at Conference on Monasteries in Asia: The Vihara Project. Kyoto University. 13-14 November 2021. https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/8800082/different-perspectives-monasteries-india See summary in Vihara Project Newsletter, vol 7, March 2022 (p. 10) https://mie-u.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=pages\_view\_main&active\_action=repository\_view\_main\_item\_detail&item\_id=15064&item\_no=1&page\_id=13&block\_id=21 ABSTRACT In this paper I outline the history and chronology of Buddhist monasteries and monasticism in Central India, based on archaeological landscape data from the Sanchi Survey Project. I will begin by discussing the distribution and morphology of monastic provisions that range from simply modified ‘natural’ rock-shelters to towering platformed monasteries, and the significance that the early appearance of courtyard-style planning has for scholarly understanding of the development of institutionalised monasticism. I will go on to present key arguments regarding associated models of governmentality (including links with water and land administration) based on the relative configuration of habitational settlements, and land and water resources in the surrounding area. The third part of the paper will focus on the later history of Buddhist monasticism and consider how the Sanchi Survey Project data relate to extant models of Buddhist decline in central and eastern India. A key argument here is that the Buddhist monastery needs to be viewed within the context of changing agrarian and economic conditions on the one hand, and changing dynamics within the broader multi-religious landscape including the proliferation of Hindu temple construction from the Gupta period onwards, on the other. I conclude by offering several suggestions for how changing perspectives on the dissolution of medieval Christian monasteries in Europe might benefit discourse on the late history of Indian Buddhism, including critiques of the traditional model of an increasingly degenerate institution whose demise was inevitable, as opposed to one whose crucial economic function and embeddedness in the local socio-economic fabric of life lent itself open to appropriation from competing forces.
Buddhism in Sarnath: An Account of Two Chinese Travellers by Dr Anuradha Singh
This paper aims to draw the religious life in Sarnath (and Varanasi) as accounted by the Chinese travellers—Fa-Hien and Hiuen-tsang. The accounts not only talk about the stupas, pillars, statues built by King Ashoka; vihars and monks (bhikshus) living in those vihars but also contain the first preachings of Lord Buddha, establishment of Sangha and the story of Mrigajataka that remain significant. With the increased popularity of Buddha dharma in China, the Chinese were attracted towards travelling to India. They came to India mainly with the intentions to visit the places related to the fond memories of Lord Buddha, to study the Buddha religion and philosophy and carry the copies of the Buddhist compositions. Fa-Hien and Hiuen-tsang occupy significant places among these Chinese travellers. These accounts can be associated with ancient history as well as with historical geography, religion and philosophy. While Fa-hien in his journey details had described about the Buddha Empire, Hiuen-tsang highlighted the civilisation of India and its cultural landscape, albeit it has been often accepted by the historians that these accounts of their journeys should be considered as significant only when they are backed by historical evidences. They opine that these travellers were mainly influenced by the Buddha dharma and therefore, their accounts are liable to containing exaggerated journey details. It is true that the journey details contain few imaginary instances; nevertheless, these accounts have been validated by the remnants, stupas and vihars at the sites.
Buddhism in Sarnath: An Account of Two Chinese Travellers
Space and Culture, India, 2014
This paper aims to draw the religious life in Sarnath (and Varanasi) as accounted by the Chinese travellers-Fa-Hien and Hiuen-tsang. The accounts not only talk about the stupas, pillars, statues built by King Ashoka; vihars and monks (bhikshus) living in those vihars but also contain the first preachings of Lord Buddha, establishment of Sangha and the story of Mrigajataka that remain significant. With the increased popularity of Buddha dharma in China, the Chinese were attracted towards travelling to India. They came to India mainly with the intentions to visit the places related to the fond memories of Lord Buddha, to study the Buddha religion and philosophy and carry the copies of the Buddhist compositions. Fa-Hien and Hiuen-tsang occupy significant places among these Chinese travellers. These accounts can be associated with ancient history as well as with historical geography, religion and philosophy. While Fa-hien in his journey details had described about the Buddha Empire, Hiuen-tsang highlighted the civilisation of India and its cultural landscape, albeit it has been often accepted by the historians that these accounts of their journeys should be considered as significant only when they are backed by historical evidences. They opine that these travellers were mainly influenced by the Buddha dharma and therefore, their accounts are liable to containing exaggerated journey details. It is true that the journey details contain few imaginary instances; nevertheless, these accounts have been validated by the remnants, stupas and vihars at the sites.
An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism
2015
An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism is a comprehensive survey of Indian Buddhism from its origins in the 6th century BCE, through its ascendance in the 1st millennium CE, and its eventual decline in mainland South Asia by the mid-2nd millennium CE. Weaving together studies of archaeological remains, architecture, iconography, inscriptions, and Buddhist historical sources, this book uncovers the quotidian concerns and practices of Buddhist monks and nuns (the sangha), and their lay adherents—concerns and practices often obscured in studies of Buddhism premised largely, if not exclusively, on Buddhist texts. At the heart of Indian Buddhism lies a persistent social contradiction between the desire for individual asceticism versus the need to maintain a coherent community of Buddhists. Before the early 1st millennium CE, the sangha relied heavily on the patronage of kings, guilds, and ordinary Buddhists to support themselves. During this period, the sangha emphasized the communal elements of Buddhism as they sought to establish themselves as the leaders of a coherent religious order. By the mid-1st millennium CE, Buddhist monasteries had become powerful political and economic institutions with extensive landholdings and wealth. This new economic self-sufficiency allowed the sangha to limit their day-to-day interaction with the laity and begin to more fully satisfy their ascetic desires for the first time. This withdrawal from regular interaction with the laity led to the collapse of Buddhism in India in the early-to-mid 2nd millennium CE. In contrast to the ever-changing religious practices of the Buddhist sangha, the Buddhist laity were more conservative—maintaining their religious practices for almost two millennia, even as they nominally shifted their allegiances to rival religious orders. This book also serves as an exemplar for the archaeological study of long-term religious change through the perspectives of practice theory, materiality, and semiotics.
Vincent Tournier, Vincent Eltschinger, and Marta Sernesi (eds.). 2020. Archaeologies of the Written: Indian, Tibetan, and Buddhist Studies in Honour of Cristina Scherrer-Schaub. Naples: Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale” (Series Minor, LXXXIX).
Excavations of the Adhālaka Great Shrine (MIA adhālaka-mahācetiya) at Kanaganahalli, between 1993 and 1999, have uncovered a wealth of sculptural and epigraphic remains that undeniably make it one of the most significant discoveries for the history of Buddhism in India in the last decades. Since the publication in 2013 of the excavation report in the Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India, the bibliography focusing on the site has steadily kept growing. With the edition of the Kanaganahalli inscriptions whose documentation was available to him, Oskar von Hinüber has laid the ground for a systematic study of their contents. The present remarks aim at addressing a point touched briefly upon by the editor, namely the monastic order or orders (nikāya) to which the Buddhist monks and nuns active at the site belonged. This issue is of crucial importance, not only as a means to reconstruct Kanaganahalli’s place in the institutional landscape of early Buddhism, but also because this information may shed light on the scriptural traditions that were in circulation at the site. This paper presents an edition and detailed analysis of the two inscribed objects containing explicit mentions of monastic orders, as well as related material from the site and from the Krishna river basin. This investigation establishes that monastic members of the Kaurukulla nikāya (closely related to the Saṁmitīyas), as well as members of—or lay donors devoted to—the Mahāvinaseliya nikāya, were both present at and around the Adhālaka Great Shrine. These two lineages stemmed from opposite parts of the Sātavāhana domain, namely Lāṭa in present-day Gujarat and the region of Dhānyakaṭaka (mod. Amaravati) in Āndhra. Members of the Kaurukulla nikāya, in particular, seem to have played a prominent role in the renovation of the site in the 2nd century CE. This said, as is also suggested by the scrutiny of coeval record from Amaravati, the quest for a univocal “school affiliation” of monuments may conceal much of the complex religious, political, and economic dynamics at work in each individual context.