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(Study Material) Indian History: THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE BUDDHIST MONKS

Indian History: THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE BUDDHIST MONKS

So far we have discussed the contiributino of Brahmin to the early transmission of Indian culture to southeast Asia. Buddhist monks, however, were at least as important in this respect. Two characteristic features of Buddhism enabled it to make a specific impact on southeast Asia, First Buddhist were imbued with a atrong missionary zeal, and second, they ignored the caste system and did not emphasize the idea of ritual purity. By his teaching as well as by the orginzation of his monastic order (Sangha) Gautama Buddha had given rise to this missionary zeal, which had then been fostered by Ashoka's dispatch of Buddhist missionaries to Western Asia, Greece, Central Asia, Sri lanka and Burma.

Buddhism's freedom from ritual restrictions and the spirit of the unity of all adherents enabled Buddhist monsk to establish contacts with people abroad, as well as to welcome them in India when they came to visit the sacred places of Buddhism, Chinese sources record 162 visits to India of Chinese of Buddhist monsk for the period from the 5th to the eigth century AD. Many more may have trvelled without having left a trace in such official records. This was an amazing international scholarly exchange programme for that day and age.

In the early centuries AD the center of Buddhist scholarship was the University of Taxila (near the present city of Islamabad),but in the fifth century AD when the University of Nalanda was founded not far from Bodh Gaya, Bihar the center of Buddhist scholarship shifted to eastern India. This university always had a large contingent of students from southeast Asia. There they spent many years close the holy places of Buddhism, copying and translating texts before returing home.

Nalanda was a cenre of Mahayana Buddhism, which became of increasing importance of Southeast Asia. We mentioned above that King Balaputa of Shrivijaya established a monastery for students of his realm at Nalanda around 860 AD which was then endowed with land grants by King Devepala of Bengal. But the Sumatran empire of Shrivijaya had acquired a good reputation in tis own right among Buddhist scholars and from the late seventh century AD attracted resident Chinese and Indian monks. The Chinese monk I-tsing stopped over at Shrivijaya capital (present day Palembang) for six months in 671 AD in order to learn Sanskrit Grammer. He then proceeded to India, where he spent 14 years, and on his retun journey he stayed another four years at Palembang so that he could translate the many texts which he had collected. In this period he went to China for a few months in 689 AD to recruit assistance for his great translation project (completed only 695 AD). On his return to China he explicitly recommended that other chiense Buddhists proceeding to India break journey in Shrivijaya, where a thousand monks lived by the same rulers as those prevailing in India. In subsequent years many Chinese Buddhists conscientitously followed this advice.

Prominent Indian Buddhists Scholars similarly made a point to visit Shrivijaya. Towards the end of Seventh century AD Dharmapala of Nalanda is supposed to have visited Suvarnadvipa (Java and Sumattra). In the beginning of the eighth century AD the south Indian monk Vajrabodhi spent five months in Shrivijaya on his way to China. He and his disciple Amoghvajra, whom he met in Java, are credited with having indroduced Buddhist Tantrism to China. Atisha, who later became know as the great reformer of Tibeta Buddhism, is said to have studied for twelve years in Survarnadvipa in the early eleventh century AD. The high standard of Buddhist learning which prevailed in Indonasia for many centuries was one of the important precodition for that great work of art, the Borobudur, whose many reliefs are a pictorial compendium the Buddhist lore, a tribute both to the craftsman ship of Indonasia artists and to the knowledge of Indonasia Buddhist Scholars.

THE LINK BETWEEN SOUTHEAST ASIA AND SOUTH INDIA

Indian historians have conducted a heated debate for many decades about the relative marits of different regions with regard to the spread of Indian influenced in southeast Asia. Now a days there seems to be a consensus that, at least as far as the early centuries AD are concerned, South India and specially Tamil Nadu-deserves the gerates credit for this achievement. In subsequent periods, however, several regional shifts as well as parallel influences emanaging from various centers can be noticed. The influence of Tamil Nadu was very strong as far as the earliest inscriptions in Southeast Asia are concerned, showing as they do the influence ofteh script prevalent in the Pallava kingdom. The oldest Buddhist sculputure in Southeast Asia- the famous Buddha of Celebes - shows the marks of the Buddhist sculptures of Amarvati (Coastal Andhra) of the third to the fifth centuries AD. Early Hindu sculptures of Western Java and of the Isthmus of Siam seem to have been guided by the Pallava style of the seventh and eighth centuries AD. Early southeast Asian temple architecture similarly shows the influence of the Pallavas and Chola styles, especially on Java and in Kampuchea.

The influence of the North Indian Gupta style also made itself felt from the fifth century AD onwards. The center of this school was Sarnath, near Baranasi (Banaras), where Buddha preached his first sermon. Sarnath produced the classical Buddha image which influenced the art of Burma and Thailand, as well as that of Funan at the mouth of the Mekong. The art of the Shailendra dynastry of Java in the eighth and ninth centuries AD - of which the Borobudur is the most famous monument - was obviously influenced by what is termed the Late Gupta style of western central Java of about (c.800 AD) explicitly refers to the canstant flow of the people from Gurjardesha (Gujarat and adjacent regions) due to which this temple had been built. Indeed, the temple's sculptures show a striking similarity with those of the late Buddhist caves of Ajanta and Ellora.

In later centuries Southeast Asia was more and more influenced by the scholars of the University of Nalanda and the style of the Pala dynasty, the last of the great Indian dynasties which bestowed royal patronage on Buddhism. The influence of Mahayana Buddhism prevailing in Bihar and Bengal under the Palas was so strong at the court of the Shailendras of Java that a Buddhist monk from 'Gaudi' (Bengal) with the typical Bengali name of Kumara Ghose, became rajguru of the Shailendra king and in this capacity consecrated a statue of Manjushri in the royal temple of the Shailenras in 782 AD. Bengal eastern Bihar and Orissa were at that time centers of cultural influence. These regions were in constant contact with Southeast Asia, whose painters and sculptors reflected the style of Eastern Indian in their works. Typical of this aesthetic was the special arrangement of figures surrounding the central figure. This types of arrangement can be found both in Indonasia sculptures and in the temple paintanings of Pagan (Burma) during this period.

In the same era south Indian influence emerged once more under the chola dynasty. Maritime trade was of major importance to the choals, who thereby also increased their cultural influences. The occasional military interventions of the Cholas did not detract from the peaceful cultural intercourse. At the northern coast of Sumatra the old port of Dilli, near Medan, had great Buddha sculptures evincing a local variation of the Chola style, indeed a magnificent status of the Hindu God Ganesha, in the pure Chola style, have recently been found at the same place, Close to the famous temple of Padang Lawas, central Sumatra, small but very impressive chola-style bronze sculptures of a four armed Lokanath and of Tara have been found. These sculptures are now in the museum of Jakarta. They are dated at 1039 AD, and a brief inscription containing Old Malay words in addition to Sanskrit words- but Tamil words-proves that the figures were not imported from India but were produced locally.

Nevertheless, Chola relations with southeast Asia were by no means a one-way street. It is presumed that the imperial cult of the Choals, centred on their enormous temples, was directly influenced by the grantd style of Angkor. The great tank at Gangaikondacholapuram was perhaps conceived by the Chola ruerl in the same spirit as that which moved the Combodian rulers who ordered the construction of the famous Barays (tanks) of Angkor, which are considered to be a special Indication of royal merit.

In the late thirteenth century Ad Pagan (Burma) was once more exposed to a strong current of difect Indian influence emanating from Bengal at that time conquered by Islamic rulers Nalanda had been destroyed by the end of the twelth century and large groups of monks in search of a new hoem flocked to Pagan and also to the Buddhist centers of Tibet. The beautiful paintings in the temples of Minnanthu in the eastern part of the city of Pagan may have due to them.

Islamic conquest cut off the holy places of Buddhism. A millennium of intensive contacts between India and southeast Asia have come to an end. But there was anther factor which must be mentioned in this contact. In 1190 AD Chapata, a Buddhist monk from Pagan, returned to that city after having spent ten years in Sri Lanka. In Burma he founded a branch of the Theravada school of Buddhism, established on the strict rules of the mahavihara monastery of the Sri Lanka. This led to a schism in the Burmese Buddhist order which had been established at Pagan by Shin Arahan about 150 years earlier. Shin Arahan was a follower of the South Indian school of Buddhism, which had its center at Kanchipuram. Chapata's reform prevailed and by the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries AD. Burma, Thailand and Combodia had adopted Theravada Buddhism of the Sri Lanka school. In Combodia this shift from Mahayana to Theravada Buddhism seesm to have been part of a socio-cultural revolution. Under the last great Knig of Angkor, Jayavarman VII (1181-1218) royan Mahayana Buddhism had become associated in the eyes of the people with the enormous buden which the king imposed upon them in order to build the enormous Buddhist temples of Angkor Thom (e.g. the gigantic Beyon).
Even in Indonesia, however, where Tantrist Buddhism with an ad-mixture of Shaivism prevailed at the courts of rulers all the way from Sumatra down to Bali, direct Indian influence rapidly receded in the thirteenth century. This was only partly due to the intervantion of Islam in India, its other cause being an upsurge of Javanese art which confined the influence of Indian art to the statues of defied. Kings erected after the death of the ruler. The outer walls of the temples were covered with Javanese reliefs which evince a great similarity to the Javanese shadowplay (Wayang kulit). The chandi Jago (thirteenth century AD) and the temples of Panantaran (fourthenth century AD) show this new Jvanese style very well. It has remained the dominant style of Bali art upto the present time. A similar trend towards the assertion of indigenous styles can also be found in the Theravads Buddhist countries. The content of the scence depicted is still derived from Hindnu mythology of Buddhist legends but the presentation clearly incorporates the respective national style.

INDIAN IMPACT ON ANCIENT SOUTH-EAST ASIA

By the opening of the Christian are the civilization of India and begun to spread across the Bay of Bengal into both island and mainland south-east Asia, and by the fifth century A.D. Indianised states, that is to say states organized along the traditional lines of Indian political theory and following the Buddhists or Hindu religions, had established themselves in many regions of Burma, Thialand, Indo-China, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Some of these states were in time to grow into great empires dominating the zone between metropolitan India and the Chiense southern border, which has sometimes been dscribed as "Further India' or "Greater India", once rooted in South-East Again soil, Indian civilization evolved in part through the action of forces of South-East Asian origin, and in part through the influence of cultural and political changes in the Indian Subcontinent civilization in terms of a series of 'waves' and there are good reasons for considering that such "waves" are still breaking in south East Asian beaches today.

The cultures of modern-East Asia all provide evidence of a long period of contact with India.

- Manyu South-East Asian languages (Maley and Javanese are good examples) contain an important proportion of words of Sanskrit of Dravidian origin. Some of these languages, like Thai, are still written in scripts which are clearly derived from Indian models.

- South East Asian concepts of kingship and authority, even in regions which are now dominated by Islam, owe much to ancient Hindu political theory. The Thai monarchy, though following Hinayana Buddhism of the Sinhalese type, still requires the presence of Gour Brahmans (who by now have become Thai in all but name) for the proper performance of its ceremonials.

- The traditional dance and shadow-puppet theatres in many South-East Asian regions, in Thailand, Malaya, and Java for example, contniue to fascinate their audiences with the adventures of Rama and Sita and Hanuman.

- It is difficult to determine the precise Indian influence on the great South-East Asian monuments as the Borobodur stupa in Java and the Khmer temples of Combodia. Theser structures are obviously in the Indian tradition. Their ground-plans, for example, and the subject matter of their sculptural decoration, can easily be related to Indian religious texts.

" Yet a careful study of monuments such as these suggests that the Indian aspects is only one part of the story. While beyond doubt showing sings of Indian influence yet Borobodur and Angkor Wat are not copies of Indian structures. There exists nothing quite like them in the Indian archaeological record. The vast majority of the Hindu and Buddhist monuments of south east Asia which were constructed in the pre-European period, that is to say before the opening of the sixteenth century, possess, as it were, a definite South-East Asian flavour. It is reasonable to consider the styles of art and architecture of the Khemrs, Chams, and Javanese as styles in their own right and something much more than the imitation of Indian prototypes. These styles, as coedes and other scholars have expressed, It, are Indiansed rather than Indian. The Indian inheritance in South-East Asia is not to be found in the unthinking repetition of Indian forms, rather, it is to be seen in the inspiration which Indian gave to south East Asia to adopt its own cultures so as to absorb and develop Indian concepts. The resulting syntheses are peculiar to south-east Asia.
The images of Buddha and Vishnu, lingas and other Hindu cult objects of the early period are far more 'Indian' and far less characteristic of any regional culture. Almost ubiquitos in south-east Asia, for example is a category of Buddha image showing very clear signs of Gupta or Amravati influence, and some examples of this can, on the established principles of India iconography, be dated to very early in the Christian era. Specimens have been found in Indo-China, Thailand, Burma, Malayisa, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

In time of process of regional evolution, the interaction of Indna and indigenous ideas began to produce a number of distinctive styles of Indianised south-east Asian art and architecture. The man art of Burma and of the socalled kingdom of Dvaravati in what is now Thailand, while retaining much that might be called Gupta, and by the sixth century A.D. begun to show a number of distinctive features of its own, some of them easy to detect by eye but very hard to define verbally. Perhaps the most obvious representation of the human face, which comes to show Physcial features characteristics of a non-Indian ethnic group. The Khemrs, Chams, and Javanese had all likewise by the end of the eights century evolved styles so individual as to have become something much more than a refletion of one or more Indian prototypes.

There is much evidence to suggest that Indian ideas, as well as Indian art, were modified in 'Further Indian' through the influence of indigenous cultures.

The cult of the Devaraja, the God King, though certainly expressed in Indian terminology, developed, so many scholars believe, into a distinctive corpus the political and consmological ideas which behind the proliferation of Khmer temples built in the form of of mystic mountains and the Javanese chandis which were not only places of worship but also royal tombs and mechanisms, as it were, designed to line the dynasty on earth with the spirit world. No more extreme examples of this cult with its identification on furler with God, be it Siva, Vishnu or Buddha, can be found than in Angkor Thom, the city of the late twelth and ear thirteenth century Khmer ruler Jayavarma VII. Here, on the gateway towers of the city, and on its central monuments, the Bayon, the face of theking himself becomes the dominant architecture motif. From all four sides of every tower of the Bayon, Jayavarman VII looks out over his capital, his lips and eyes suggesting an enigmatic and slightly malevolent smile. This is something which the Roman emperors, who defined themselves in their onw lifetimes, would have understood, but which would have been beyond the comprehension of the great Hindu and Buddhist dynasties of India. The Devaraja cult of the Khemrs, Chams, and Javanese Indianlised kings has survived to the present day in Thailand, where it explains many features of the modern Thai monarchy.

The individually of the major art styles of Indianised sout-east Asia is, as we have already noted, to a great extent the result of interaction between Indian and preIndian indigenous south-east Asian concepts and traditions. The south -East Asian component in this cultural equatioin, however, is far more difficult to define than the Indian.