Developments in Buddhism

We have sketched some of the developments in the vaidika response to urban culture. Before leaving this time period, it is appropriate to return to Buddhism and sketch some of the developments therein.

First, it may be helpful, by way of summary, to outline a comparative frame which indicates how Buddhist communities and brahmanic communities were reflecting the period.

Kingship

In the brahmanic or vaidika view, kingship was sacralized as in maharaja, devaputra (son of the gods), and other terms. The king was to practice artha (statecraft) and was rhetorically legitimated for the people by brahmans.

In the Buddhist context, the emperor, especially Asoka, was cakravartin (wheel-turner); he exemplified the lay bodhisattva, and maintained stability in the social order, legitimated and advised by monks.

Ethics

In vaidikasettings, there was emphasis on artha (statecraft), dharma (responsible living in the world), and varnasmmas (stages of life, now emphasizing the role of householder). Ethics was a form of sacrifice and ritual.

In Buddhism, the emphasis of laypersons was on karma (appropriate action), including donations and morality. For monks, rules (vinaya) for the monastic setting were articulated and the doctrine of the six perfections developed by the third century after Buddha.

Attitude toward city-state

In brahmanic discourse, the city-state was where dharma was to be enacted; the world was increasingly seen as the playground (lila) of the gods; renunciation was to be of “fruits” not of action.

In Buddhist contexts, the city-state had become the arena for working out enlightenment; dialectic interaction existed between monk and laity; the role of the bodhisattva (the wise one who had “dispassionate compassion” for all sentient beings) took precedence in Mahayana schools. By the third century ce, the distinction between nirvana and samsara was collapsed in Nagarjuna’s doctrine of emptiness (sunyata).

Pantheon

In vaidika settings, there was the mythologization of “high deities” (e.g., Siva, Visnu, Skanda) as well as personification of the once impersonal brahman deities incorporated Buddhist, “folk,” and vaidika motifs.

In Buddhism, by the second century ce, under the Kusanas, the Buddha had become like a king atop the cosmos, enhanced by Iranian notions of light and Greco-Roman artistic forms. Buddha gave warrant (varan) to his “ministers,” the bodhisattvas.

Iconography

In vaidika settings, early forms were probably in wood and other nonpermanent materials, but became permanent by the late Gupta period. The icon was the embodiment of the divine, equated to king and cosmos, and the center of worship. Iconic representations of the deities often emulated Buddhist and Jain poses, gestures, etc.

In the Buddhist case, until the first century ce, Buddha was depicted aniconically (e.g., as the “bo” tree, lotus, throne, caitya), then anthropomor- phically by the first century CE. By the third century ce, one finds depictions of the “life” of the Buddha reflecting folk tales adapted for his “life.” Iconic representations were viewed as embodying buddhahood now non-distinct from the realm of matter and samsara.

Sacred spaces

Vaidika religion was now usually housed in a temple (though none have survived from before the fifth century CE). The temple was congruent to the palace, cosmos, and human torso. Its tower (sikhara) may have been intimated in the form of the stupa, and its assembly hall (mandapa), may have been congruent to the Buddhist vihara (living quarters); the inner sanctum (garbhagrha, “womb house”), housing the icon like an embryo, emulated early cave sanctuaries and the caves where Buddhists and Jains dwelt.

Buddhist structures included the stupa to be used as memorial housings for ashes or relics. The stupas included an “egg” (anda) representing the cosmos, topped by a caitya or representation of Buddha atop the cosmos; walkways and doorways around the stupa by the second century bce included carvings reflecting the landscape - e.g., totemic animals, yaksis (buxom female attendants equated to vegetation, etc.); the vihara was the living quarters for monks and could include sculpting drawn from the Buddha’s life, caityas, etc.

Even though brahmanically informed expressions of religion were prolific and often responded to Buddhism, the latter flourished as well. Given patronage by Asoka, the Kusanas, and such other dynasties as the Satavahanas in the Southern Deccan, Buddhist settlements were numerous and their influence in certain settings considerable. In some Buddhist centers, for example, Nagarjunakonda and Amaravatl in the Southern Deccan, monastic communities were established and schools or colleges supported. In Nagarjunakonda, for example, one of the earliest medical schools on the subcontinent flourished in the third and fourth centuries ce.

By the first century ce, there had arisen within Buddhism a movement which called itself Mahayana (the “great vehicle”) in contrast to what was called Hinayana (lesser vehicle), also known as Theravada. Mahayana emerged from the Mahasafighika schools, which from the early days had disparaged the arhats and espoused such views as that the Buddha was transmundane, and that the historical Buddha was a mere manifestation of him. The Mahayana schools claimed that buddhahood was innate to all, that the path of the bodhisattva could be followed by any, and that a pantheon of superhuman bodhisattvas and Buddhas existed to help devotees in various ways. Buddhist literature flourished in Pali for the Hinayana schools and Sanskrit for the Mahayana ones, the latter often offered with the claim that the represented doctrine was preserved from the mouth of the Buddha himself.

The Mahasanghikas, together with the Sarvastivadins, were especially influential in the Kusana period (first-third century ce). The Sarvastivadins were particularly strong in Mathura and Kashmir and, like the Mahasanghikas, were influenced by Greek and Persian ideas.⁵³ These groups provided the rationale for the explosion of Buddhist art when Buddhas and bodhisattvas were iconographically depicted. Under the Kusanas one found the concrete personifications of Amitabha, the Buddha embodying light, enlightenment, and wisdom, and of the bodhisattvas: Maitreya (the compassionate one, personifying light), Manjusri (the “crown prince” of dharma), and Avalokitesvara (rich in love and compassion and Buddha’s chief attendant).

Nearly thirty schools of Buddhist thought and practice grew in India, many of them during this period. It will suffice by way of illustration to mention but two of these. From the school once known as the Mahasanghikas (those of the larger congregation) emerged the Madhyamika school by the late second century ce. Indebted to Nagarjuna’s doctrine of “emptiness” (sUnyata) this school collapsed all dualities. Simply put, the argument goes as follows: existence was characterized by svabhava (having its own independent existence). But, in fact, nothing had svabhava as all were interdependent - neither nirvana nor samsara had svabhava. It follows then that samsara (the phenomenal world) was homologous to nirvana. Hence, buddhahood itself was found in this world; all dualities were collapsed - those between self and other, wisdom and action included. Hence, tangible symbols could be used to depict buddhahood.

Nagarjuna’s doctrine of sunyata and the concomitant idea that buddha- hood could be found in all material objects provided an added rationale for the forms of worship that occurred at a popular level. Buddhist piety was often expressed by the laity in ways not unlike those of their “vaidika” counterparts, in that it incorporated elements from the local “folk” landscape, and could include offerings of food, incense, flowers, or water. Cultic centers developed at places where the Buddha was believed to have been present or where the relics of saints were buried. Devotion could be focused toward tree spirits, fertility goddesses, reliquary mounds, and eventually toward representations of the Buddha himself. The use of prayer flags, prayer wheels, and other symbolic objects became commonplace. Important events in the Buddha’s life were grafted onto the seasonal calendar and became occasions for celebration - most notably, his birth and enlightenment, said to have occurred at the full moon of the month of April-May.⁵⁴

Another school emerging by the third and fourth centuries ce was that known as yogarara. As the name suggests, this school was characterized by the adoption of yoga to Buddhism: the cosmos was homologized to the body and enlightenment could occur in and through the body.

In this school, the six perfections became ten and were personified concretely. Hence, for example, the attribute of wisdom (prajha) could be expressed in concrete iconic form, not so much to be worshiped but as a focus for meditation and a model for emulation. Some of these attributes were expressed in feminine form, a foretaste of the later Vajrayana school also known as tantric Buddhism. (We will return to Vajrayana in a later context.) The Yogacara school was also known for its doctrine of alaya-vijhana, which might be translated as “storehouse of consciousness.” The alaya-vijnana was located within the body, yet seemed to store seeds of consciousness that, because of the logic of karma, could be passed along to subsequent generations. Intimated here was the possibility of reincarnation, which became so common a part of Buddhism in Tibet, China, and Japan. Indeed, Yogacara was one of these schools that migrated to China.

Another conviction of the Yogacara school was the doctrine of tathagata- garbha (“essence of the thus-gone-one”). That is, the Buddha existed in embryonic form as in a womb that existed within all human beings. That “womb” was equatable to the “storehouse of consciousness.”⁵⁵ All human beings therefore had the innate nature of buddhahood and need only be enlightened to that truth. As one made one’s way toward buddhahood one could become a bodhisattva who vows to postpone ultimate enlightenment until all beings can be enlightened as well. In the meanwhile, bodhisattvas could share their merit with laypersons (thereby helping both petitioner and bodhisattva to accrue additional merit); all persons were thereby helped along the path.

It was during this age of empire that Buddhism spread out of India. Asoka, for example, sent Buddhist emissaries into the Greek world (more on this in a later context). During the Kusana period, monks of the Mahayana

schools started making their way via the Silk Route into Central Asia and eventually to China.

Not least important, Emperor Asoka is said to have sent his own relative as an emissary to the court in Sri Lanka. Emperor Tissa is said to have been converted and Sri Lanka ever since remained a center of Theravada Buddhist culture, literature, and thought. Indeed, it was from Sri Lanka that Theravada Buddhism flowed into Southeast Asia - to Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Indonesia.

By the fifth century ce, many of the Buddhist texts were systematized. Some portions of the earliest, Vinayapitaka (discourses or literally “baskets” on the monastic discipline) and Suttapitaka (dialogues to elucidate points of dhamma), may even have been pre-Mauryan. During the fourth to third centuries bce, such texts as the Digha, Majjh.ima, Samyukta, and Anguttara Nikaya (“collections” of discourses) were being recorded. The Pali sUttas followed around the second to first centuries BCE. The Abhidammapitaka (literally, “basket of scholasticism”) is to be dated about the first century bce to the first century ce, and the Dipavamsa (fourth to fifth centuries ce) and the Mahavamsa (both historical chronicles in Pali, fifth to sixth centuries ce) followed.⁵⁶

Without doubt, the religious developments that occurred in this urban period, from the Mauryas to the Guptas, permanently changed the religious landscape of the subcontinent and had an impact, especially through Buddhism, in Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East. What eventually becomes known as “Hinduism” with its theism and devotional complexity is scarcely intelligible without seeing its roots in this period. The ways in which the Sanskritizing process works throughout the rest of Indian history is aptly illustrated in these Gangetic urban complexes. The dialectic between the “new” and the legitimating “old” is evident here as is the central metaphor of ritual. Enactment of “sacrifice,” of “doing the truth,” became a fundamental way of affirming lineage and identity and of passing along a perceived heritage to later generations. The profound changes taking place in urban India, from the fourth century bce to the fifth century ce, were integrated and assimilated so smoothly by the brahmanic synthesizers, one scarcely notices that there has been change at all. That has been something of the genius of this religious stream - accommodating tributaries into it and spawning additional rivulets out. Of course, the religious practice of the cities was innovative and different, but they were still vaidika or non-vaidika insofar as there was a normative community who could make “connections” and link each community’s perceptions to an authenticating past. It is a process that continues to this day.

Developments in Buddhism

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