Issues in the History of Indian Buddhism

2013年度

龍谷大学アジア仏教文化研究センター

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龍谷

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仏教文化

IIssues in the History of Indian Buddhism

Giovanni Verardi

1

Giovanni Verardi

Issues in the History of Indian Buddhism

In December 2011, I was invited by the Ry koku University in Kyoto to present Hard-

ships and Downfall of Buddhism in India, a book of mine that had been published some

months before (Verardi 2011b). In the course of the lecture, I first illustrated the contents

of the book, and then I focused on a few issues that seemed to me particularly worthy of

attention. The assumptions of the discussion are the following:

a) In ancient India there was not a single model of society but, rather, two oppos-

ing models of social and economic relations that coexisted for a long time in conflict. In-

clusive paradigms should be rejected in particular, the idea, created by western scholars

and Indian historians who felt the need to provide their country with a national ideology,

of a unified India where Brahmanism and Buddhism are almost interchangeable.

b) One of these models, Buddhism, kept its initial antinomial character to the

end.1 Only if we understand Buddhism as a system opposing the nómos established by

the Brahmanical tradition, we can overcome the difficulty of connecting the Vajray na to

the earlier traditions. The Vajray na recovered, in a changed situation, the most radical

antinomian positions of the beginning.

c) The history of ancient India involved a high rate of violence, much of which

caused by the imposition of the var a state. Violence found a tenuous disguise in myth

and iconographies. We still lack a methodology allowing us to use all the un-Rankean

sources, though the latter tell us a lot about violence, keeping memory of otherwise for-

gotten events. Orthodox Brahmans wrote history by resorting to metaphors and allegories,

1 This is the reason why I prefer to limit the discussion to Buddhism, initially less radical than Jainism,

without addressing the complex discourse of the segmented “ rama a model”.

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refusing to adopt the logic of chronologies and positive data, whose documentary power

they knew but which they judged counterproductive to their purposes.

Buddhism is a religious system, interpretable as an antinomial model, that in the

historical process was obliged, by ideology and violence, to dramatically and continu-

ously reposition itself. This resulted in being suppressed or being cornered into subaltern

positions. For example, a part of the rama as started rather early to organize themselves

according to a community model paralleling the Brahmanical priesthood.

Early Buddhism had interpreted the needs of the merchant class and of the urban

manufacturing classes that had come to the fore in the third century BC when India came

into contact and became part of the Hellenistic world.2 At first, the Buddhists found sup-

port in the anti-establishment, “enlightened” despotism of an A oka, and then boomed

between the late second century BC and the early third century AD. Later on, when the

var a state became a fait accompli, Buddhism continued to give voice to the social and

ethnic sectors opposing the agricultural, self-referential model of the t rthikas. The idea

of state and society that the Buddhists had in mind was compatible with the varied

peoples inhabiting the subcontinent, whereas the Brahmanical model implied their forced

incorporation into the boundaries of an agrarian society organized according to the rules

of var ramadharma. The latter was opposed not only by the trading classes, to which

operational freedom was necessary, and by the natives who saw themselves downgraded

to the lower peasantry ranks, but also by the Brahmans who had joined Buddhism. There

was a dramatic split in the br hma avar a that was never healed: that a part of the

Brahmans opposed the fundamentals of their own var a could not be accepted.

1. The Guptas, and the Buddhists in Checkmate

The first question we address is the break represented in Indian history by the Gupta state

and that sort of re-nationalization of the Indian world which meant the expulsion of the

Buddhists from political power and economic initiative. The Artha stra, now better at-

2 This may seem a position derived from outdated paradigms that read the history of India through Greco-

Roman (more Greek than Roman) glasses. Not so; the fact remains that the opening of ancient India to the

outside, with the predictable internal reactions, coincided with, and largely depended on the breakout to-

wards the east first by Alexander and his successors and then by the Roman republic and empire. At a

macro-historical level, Toynbee’s view, which includes India in the Hellenized world, is founded, except

for matters of detail (see e.g. Toynbee 1967: esp. 114, 178 79, 180 81 and passim).

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tributed to the fourth century AD (cf. Willis 2009: 62) helps clarifying the policy fol-

lowed by the dynasty. The government of the rightful, namely orthodox king is based on

da an ti (policy exercised through coercion) and r jadharma (the king’s duty to pre-

serve the four var as). It was in the Gupta period and its aftermath that the “Kali Age lit-

erature” was produced, whose targets are the merchants and artisans, responsible for so-

cial disorder. The vai yas refused to offer sacrifices, depriving the Brahmans of their fees,

and whole regions were under the control of the p sa as, the heretics. In connection

with this, many Brahmans had apostatized.3 Some scholars have acknowledged the upris-

ing of the subject castes and the intense hostility between Brahmans and dras in this

period4 but have not recognized that these two facts are one and the same thing with the

Buddhist hegemony over society and the reaction against the religion of Dharma, respec-

tively. Between the late third and the fifth century, Buddhism was not the only dissident

voice, but was held responsible for having exercised hegemony over change and was

identified with it.

The Guptas were a vamedhin kings, but around AD 400 a crucial readjustment

took place. At Udayagiri (Vidisa), the ritual capital of the dynasty, we observe the emer-

gence of Bh gavatism not only as the state religion but as a theistic system capable of

uniting forces with the other major system, Sivaism (as we call it now), while keeping a

strategic tie with the Veda. The audacity of the operation is measured by the fact that

even lower cults based on magic and black magic, represented by the Atharvaveda, were

included into the synthesis: the purohita of the Guptas was a K p lika (Willis 2009: 169

ff.). The great Brahmanical myths were created or reshaped in this period as a function of

the colonization of lands and the strengthening of the new powers that found representa-

tion in the theistic systems. Hence the myth of Tripura, the three towns of the asuras

(identified with the Buddhists) destroyed by iva; hence King Bali, of Asuric descent,

obliged to give all his lands to Vi u-V mana, who fools him presenting himself, in the

iconographies, as the Buddha (fig. 1); etc.5

3 Cf. e.g. V yu Pur a (I.58.38, 49; vol. 1, pp. 412 13), where we read that in the Kali age “[t]he

Br hma as do not perform Yajñas” and “perform obeisance to S dras” (for the whole passage on the Kali

Yuga see I.58. 31 70). 4 Notably R.C. Sharma in his study on the Kali Age literature (Sharma 1982). 5 Some of these myths are analyzed in this perspective in Verardi (2011b:162ff., 265ff. and passim). Re-

garding the story of Vi u Trivikrama, there is an earlier representation of V mana as Buddha in Cave II at

4

The international crisis of the third century had greatly favoured the agrarian pol-

icy of the Brahmans. We observe a rapid decline in Indian urbanization (Sharma 1987)

and the replacement of manufacturing and trading towns with t rthas. Rural India was

largely colonized by the P upatas, who acted as priests or puj ris, as shown by a very

large set of archaeological finds from all over northern India. They unmistakably depict

either Sivaite ascetics or iva himself, as is shown by their j as and, in many a case, by

the third eye (fig. 2).6 There were groups of P upatas who identified with iva’s bull

(van Troy 1990: 7), and clay images of bulls are particularly numerous among the many

thousands of small cultic objects that we find throughout the Ganges Valley in the early

centuries AD (Verardi 2011b: 145 46).

A few Buddhist sources provide us with some information on the state of the reli-

gion in the fourth century. In Asa ga’s Bodhisattvabh mi, cruel kings and ministers are

mentioned along with the accusation of the property of the sa gha or a st pa being taken

away;7 in the fourth-fifth century Sanskrit redaction of the Lotus S tra, monks are re-

ported to be expelled from vih ras, to be imprisoned and punished.8 We also have the

story of the Si hala monks Mah n man and Upasena who reported that, at the time of

Samudragupta, in such a large country as Jambudv pa there was no place for them to live

(cf. Law 1967: 29, 97b, 2; p. 15). According to the later testimony of the

Mañju r m lakalpa, Samudragupta, sacrificing animals and surrounded by bad counci-

lors, greatly committed sin, his kingdom being inundated by “carping logicians, vile

Brahmins” (cf. Jayaswal 1937: 48).

The Guptas took upon themselves the task to remedy the confusion of castes (i.e.

the dynamics of a not exclusively agrarian economy), repeatedly condemned in Brah-

manical texts, that had occurred in the previous centuries. The need to compromise under

the increasingly strong Brahmanical pressure meant for the Buddhists the acceptance of

caste rules, despite the fact that they rejected them in principle and, when possible, in the

Badami, where the Dwarf is shown with elongated ears and u (cf. ibidem: 164, fig. 2). This and the

example in fig. 1 disclose the extent to which iconographies can contextualize myths. 6 A terracotta head which can be identified with that of iva was found in the excavations at Sringa-

verapura (Allahabad District). B.B. Lal has dated it to the first century AD and has described it in the detail

(Lal 1993: 111 15). 7 Cf. McFarlane (1995: 194), quoting from Unrai Wogihara’s edition of the text (T ky 1930 36, 165 7). 8 Saddharmapu ar ka S tra (12.3 21; pp. 259 61); Nattier (2008: esp. 20 ff.; 2003: esp. 48 ff.) has shown

that the Sanskrit text we have is a post-third century redaction. It can arguably be dated to Gupta times.

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reality.9 Faxian has a story set in P aliputra regarding the Buddhist master Raivata, a

Brahman by caste, who “led a pure and solitary life”. The king of the country revered

him as his guru, but whenever he went to visit him, he did not dare to sit beside him. “If

the king, from a feeling of love and veneration, grasped his hand … the Brahman would

immediately wash it” (Giles 1923: 46).10 Raivata considered the contact with who was

arguably a petty king of lower birth polluting, but the people of his country revered the

guru because he “diffuse[d] widely the Faith in Buddha, so that the heretics were unable

to persecute the priesthood” (ibidem). They considered Raivata one of them on the basis

of his social conduct, not of his ideas (a minor, resorbable factor), leaving the monastic

community in peace. A perfect trap, for the Buddhists.

Society could not be controlled without the performance of rituals (the rites of

passage, in particular), and a part of the Buddhists realized that they could not leave them

in the hands of the orthodox. Rituals could not be celebrated in disagreement with the

rules established in the dharma stras, and only Brahmans were entitled to perform them.

This is the reason why the early bodhisattvas are said to be born in upper castes and be,

quite often, Brahmans. It remains to be determined with accuracy what were the milieus

in which this important shift (which does not necessarily mean surrender to the estab-

lishment) took place: as already mentioned, the fracture within the first var a was very

serious and fraught with dramatic consequences.

In the context of the rapid dissolution of the Buddhist hegemony between the late

second and the third century, we also observe an emerging polarity between the ara ya

and gr ma monks. The ara ya bodhisattvas accused the gr ma monks to be involved in

agriculture and trade and settle in villages. The Questions of R trap la depicts a situa-

tion where not only gr ma bodhisattvas but also “corrupt” monks had established them-

selves on an independent or semi-independent basis. They would not pay homage to the

teachers and saints (cf. R trap laparip cch S tra: 99; p. 130), and regarding their

functions as performers of rites, they performed services for people in the household

“[t]aking up the banner of the Buddha” (ibidem: 179; p. 138). The “corrupt monks” kept

cows, horses, asses, livestock, male and female slaves, and did not distinguish between

their own property and what belonged to the st pa and the sa gha. Moreover, “they

9 The reader is referred to Eltschinger (2000) for a close examination of the issue. 10 For the travelogue of Faxian, see now Max Deeg’s edition, translation and comment of the text (for the

Raivata episode, Deeg 2005: 548).

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would have wives, sons, and daughters just like a householder” (ibidem: 180 81, 183; p.

138). Thus family-based institutions run by Buddhist priests seem to have been already in

existence at a rather early age. Many monasteries had been forcibly abandoned, and the

guiding capacity of the leading monasteries was severely reduced. There were no coun-

cils entitled to impose, at least to an extent, a set of doctrines and social behaviours in

line with the country’s re-ruralisation. It is not a question of Hinay na/Mah y na dichot-

omy. Xuanzang provides us with surprising testimony on the state of the clergy. In Sind,

he noted a group of adherents to the Little Vehicle who shaved their heads and wore the

ka ya robes of the bhik us, but were engaged in the ordinary affairs of lay life. In the

past, they had followed the monastic rules, but the “changed times” had brought them to

live as worldly people, “with sons and grandsons” (Beal 1884, II: 273 74). Xuanzang

was a staunch supporter of the Mah y na, which was a better strategy (y na) to re-assert

Buddhist hegemony after that the strategy of earlier Buddhism (Hinay na, as it was la-

beled) in countering the comeback of the t rthikas had failed. To his eyes, the Mah y na

also meant reasserting the rules of the Vinaya after a long period of decline and compro-

mise.11

It was only from the mid-fifth century that the Buddhists started regaining part of

their lost power. At Mathura and Sarnath new images of the Buddha started being again

produced (see e.g. Gottfried Williams 1982: figs. 60 ff., 85 ff.), after that image making

had come to a halt or had been severely reduced in the fourth century; the sa gha reor-

ganized itself at Ajanta in the second half of the fifth century,12 etc. The Gupta dynasty

was near its end, and new perspectives opened for the Buddhists in northern India even

though the H as, entering in the subcontinent, espoused the religious policy of the Gup-

11 This, I now believe, is the correct view. Previously it had seemed to me, influenced as I was by the dec-

ades-long debate about the origins of the Mah y na, that within the latter two trends could be distin-

guished: the subaltern and compromising one and the rigorist one (à la Xuanzang). Now I prefer to think

that the Mah y na reacted as a whole to what were considered the inadequacies and degenerations of the

ancient y na, unable to meet the challenges of the time and often ready to compromise. 12 Walter Spink has devoted a number of works on the Buddhist revival at Ajanta in the second half of the

fifth century (cf. especially Spink 2005 7), maintaining that it was due to the patronage of the V k aka

king Hari e a. But Hari e a, like the other rulers of the dynasty, was an orthodox, a vamedhin king who, if

that was the case, might have acted by proxy through his wives to protect Buddhism, according to a well-

documented procedure. Spink’s construction of Ajanta as a royal V k aka site has been questioned, for

different reasons, by Bakker (1997: 37 ff.).

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tas.13 The true heirs of the latter were, however, in the Deccan: the southern kingdoms es-

tablished themselves along the lines laid down in the fourth century, and it was from

them that a slow but steady comeback towards north would start. The role played by

South India in the history of the country is generally underestimated, mainly because of

the difficulty for scholars to access the written sources, numerous though they are.

2. Politics and Doctrinal Debates

Xuanzang must have praised the Mah y na also because it had developed a dialectical

system able to withstand the offensive of the t rthikas. In the Xiyuji there are frequent

references to the public debates held between Buddhists and t rthikas, such as those held

at rughna, Pray ga, P aliputra, in Kar asuvar a, etc. (Beal 1884, I: 186 87; II: 230 31,

96 97, 202 4): the sa ghas would spring up again (with the building of new monaster-

ies, the resumption of economic activities of the laity, etc.) as a result of the victory of

the Buddhist v dins. Yijing reports that Buddhist controversialists, after studying at

N land or Valabh could “discuss possible and impossible doctrines”, acquiring confi-

dence in themselves. Thus they could “proceed to the king’s court to lay down before it

the sharp weapon (of their abilities)” and show their political talent, “seeking to be ap-

pointed in the practical government” (Takakusu 1896: 177). An authority such as N g r-

juna already had the role to propitiate kings and persuade people to accept Buddhism and

discard the Vedic faith (Scherrer-Schaub 2007: 762 63). The stakes of doctrinal debates

was political power since at least Gupta times. In the Benares subjected to Gupta rule, the

complete reorganization of the educational and academic life became possible when the

Bh gavatas won in a crucial debate over the Vijñ nav da logicians. The Yog c rins had

to abandon their establishment in Bhadaini, where their monastery was arguably disman-

tled and a ku a, the Lol rka Ku a, which is still there, was realized on the site

(Agrawala 1983: 5 6).

13 Suffice here to mention Dhanyavi u’s Boar inscription at the Bh gavata site of Eran, which opens men-

tioning the great fame and lustre of Toram a who rules the earth, and the Gwalior inscription of Mihira-

kula, where the king declares himself to be a worshipper of Pa upati (Sircar 1965: no. 55, pp. 420 22; no.

57, pp. 424 26).

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After the Guptas, inter-religious controversies14 acquired an even greater impor-

tance. The development of Indian logic may be construed as a function of the political

need of finding support at court, on pain of loss of patronage, expulsion from a given ter-

ritory, and the risk, which became more and more concrete, of a death sentence, already

attested to in the Xiyuji (Beal 1984, II, 97 99, 262 64). nv k ik , the science of inferen-

tial reasoning, central to doctrinal controversies, was not connected to philosophy, but

pertained to the domain of n ti stra and r jadharma, and was thus strictly related to

kingship (Hakker 1958: 64 67). Debates were regarded as judicial procedures, as appears

from the strict rules that had to be followed and by the fact that they occurred only in the

courts of kings and judges appointed by the king. The legal dimension of Indian debates

eludes us, but we can say that the judiciary passed under the control of the theistic

movements, in parallel to what was happening in the Mediterranean, where, after Theo-

dosius, the disputations with those who now were considered heretics were no longer

theological debates but legal trials (Humfress 2007: 248 ff.).15 It further appears that in

India debates increasingly acquired the nature of ordeals.

When the Bh gavatas replaced the Sivaites in Kanchipuram, we would see the

Buddhists impaled after being sentenced to death by the Pallava king Nandivarman II (c.

AD 730 95), a resolute persecutor of rama as. The temple of Vaiku ha Perum with

the attached gallery decorated with panels illustrating the deeds of the sovereign was

built in the second half of the eighth century in accord with the prescriptions of the

P ñcar tra gama (Hudson 2002: 134). The king is shown seated in a pavilion where he

has delivered judgement, arguably after a doctrinal debate (fig. 3). One of the early three

lv rs is depicted in the adjacent panel, and we know that the lv rs, particularly

Tiruma kai and To ara ippo i, went very far in their anxiety to condition the policy of

the ruler and get rid of the rama as. In one of his hymns, To ara ippo i, a contempo-

rary of king Nandivarman, upholds that it is his duty to chop off the heads of the

rama as. All this was functional to the distribution of lands after the clearing of all per-

14 It goes without saying that I find unacceptable to speak of “inter-sectarian” debates and struggles when

Buddhism or a form of Buddhism are included in the pile: with “sects” we mean a part of a single, momen-

tarily fragmented but re-unifiable system. 15 Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity state religion in AD 380; hence, also a different attitude to-

wards positions that had coexisted, though in conflict, in the early Church but were now considered hereti-

cal.

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sons whose observances were not in accordance to dharma (the dharma of the ortho-

dox).16

A number of sources, mostly un-Rankean, attest that the losing party in a debate

was obliged to leave a given territory. This happened to the Buddhists with increased

frequency after the death of Har avardhana (AD 647), when Buddhism risked collapse.

In the hagiographic material, both Brahmanical and Jain, as well as in T ran tha, we also

have several examples of the necessity of capturing the skill of argumentation of the op-

ponents by breaking into a Buddhist monastery or, conversely, into a Brahmanical ma ha

in disguise.17 The stories mentioning mutilation or the death penalty inflicted to the

Buddhists have been dismissed as apocryphal or as belonging to a much later time (the

thirteenth century, mainly), but if we consider the evidence from the “data base” (ar-

chaeology, epigraphy, iconography), we realize that violent means to silence one own

opponents have a long story behind them. A few examples will suffice to make the point

clear.

In Kerala, king C ram Perum , who initially favoured Buddhism, was per-

suaded by the Brahmans to organize a public debate with the aim of overcoming the

Buddhists: the tongues of the losers should be cut out. The dispute ended favourably to

the Brahmans, and the tongues of the Buddhists were cut out and they were banished the

country. The Perum s were a local lineage of kings who were given k atriya status by

the Brahmans and became supporters of orthodoxy. The king of the story is probably the

eighth-century C ram Perum of Mak tai (modern Kodungallur) in the C ra country

(Zvelebil 1975: 142 43), and the debate, with the resulting distribution of lands to the

Brahmans, took place at Trikkariyur (Verardi 2011b: 25 26, 219).18 Control over society

was exercised through a network of temples, the rulers being often figureheads with little 16 The reader is referred to Minakshi (1938: 171 72) for the identification of the impaled as Buddhists, the

role of the lv rs and the political-religious significance of the king’s actions. 17 See e.g. T ran tha’s account of Dharmak rti disguising himself as a servant in order “to learn the secret

teachings of the t rthika systems” (T ran tha: 89A; p. 230) or the story of the Jain guru Haribhadra, two

disciples of whom went to study logic at Bodhgay in disguise and were killed when they were discovered.

On the different versions of the latter story, see Granoff (1989; I do not think that these stories are just

“legends”), and see Verardi (2011b: 210 ff.) for an attempt at contextualizing historically the various

strategies for success. 18 The story is reported in the K ral lpatti and in a number of local pur as and other medieval texts (see

e.g. Taylor 1838: 183). See now Veluthat (2006) on the use of such sources as the K ral lpatti for histori-

cal purposes.

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real power outside of what was ceded to them by the temple priests. A bold and visible

Brahman oligarchy was often thinly disguised as a monarchy (Narayanan 2002: 116). In

the case of king C ram , none of our sources is “positive”, and iconographic evidence is

also lacking, and yet it is possible to reconstruct the picture.

The same can be said we are in Tamil Nadu of certain stories pertaining to the

earlier (Sivaite) wave of theistic reaction against the rama as. The great saint Campan-

tar [Sambandar], one of the early N yan r who lived in the second half of the seventh

century and a Brahman by caste, caused the head of the v din Buddhanandi to roll on the

ground by the potency of a song during a debate at Butamankalam in the middle Kaveri

plain.19 Despite the death of their elder, the Buddhists insisted on another debate to be

held, centred on mok a. It ended with the victory of Campantar and with the conversion

of the Buddhists to the Sivaite faith. Going through the story, we understand that the

Sivaite crowd that welcomed Campantar on his arrival in town created the conditions to

cause the death of the Buddhist elder. Intimidations and preventive acts were meant to

avoid major clashes. The story is told at length in the Periya Pura am,20 through which,

as has been observed, we are inevitably led to read all the earlier evidence (Gros 1984): it

is difficult, however, to imagine a community of Buddhists being cleared away from the

main settlement of a fertile area such as Butamankalam in twelfth-century

C ama alam: the story cannot but refer to an earlier period. There is ampler evidence

on the anti- rama a operations carried out by the Sivaites in the late seventh early

eighth century (see below). They came as a consequence of the speeding-up of the Brah-

manical settlement policy, thanks to which the most fertile, generally riverine regions,

were firstly colonized, and then, step by step, the less productive and even the marginal

areas. Debates, legitimation of power and occupation of lands are aspects of a coordi-

nated process. We would better understand the unwinding of Indian medieval history by

putting aside the idea of an India forced in the cage of a “feudal” phase. Indian Marxist

historians have done a great service to the development of the discipline, but I do not

think that the category “feudalism”, which is the object of reconsideration even in Europe

(Reynolds 2004), is of great help for us to understand medieval India, of which it is 19 It is identified with present Budalur near Tirukkattupalli in Thanjavur district, and, tentatively, with the

native place of the fifth-century thera Buddhadatta (Dikshitar 1931: 689, n. 1). 20 Periya Pur am (33.904 25; vol. 2, pp. 176 181). See Verardi (2011b: 214 ff.) for the historical fram-

ing of this and similar facts. In the same locality, Campantar vanquished another Buddhist v din, riputra,

and defeated once again the Buddhists at Sattamankai (Ramachandran 1954: 7, 10).

11

probably not a structural component. The t rthikas did hold power and lands, very often

usurping the function of the k atriyas. For all the possible parallels in the ownership and

management of lands and estates, even Karl Marx was looking for an “Asiatic” mode of

production. Inexistent as the latter is, this suggests that it is more appropriate to look for

the operative mechanisms of a system within it.

3. Level of Confrontation

There are many examples of the escalating level of violence against Buddhist institutions

in the eighth century and later. Besides the intervention of kings, militias were formed in

ivaite ma has and in Bh gavata circles as well to knock down the power of the

rama as (Verardi 2011b: 231ff.). There are no appreciable differences among the vari-

ous regions of India but for the tools used and, quite often, for the different nature of the

documentation at our disposal. The dynamics observable in the Valley of Kathmandu, in

Orissa, at Ellora, and, again, in Kanchipuram, may help clarifying the point.

A hymn engraved on the Garu a pillar at Andigr ma in Vi alnagara (early Kath-

mandu) praises the i Vy sa for having cured the evils described in the Kali Age litera-

ture: “men had taken to atheism”, and “the false logicians (i.e. the Buddhist v dins) were

suppressing the truth”. These “disciples of the Sugata” are called “crooked distorters of

this world” (Regmi 1983: no. XXVII; see here fig. 4). The excavations carried out in the

adjacent area have shown that a st pa was dismantled after AD 749, that the area was

thoroughly cleared of all Buddhist memory, and that a Vi u temple was erected on the

Buddhist monuments razed to the ground (figs. 5, 6). The Garu a pillar was erected on a

base made with the bricks robbed from the st pa (Verardi 1992, I: 88 90; see here fig. 7).

Andigr ma became Harigaon, the village of the temple of Hari whose revenues were as-

signed to the maintenance of the Vi u temple.21 Bh gavatism established itself in the

Valley as the hegemonic power, but the role played by the Sivaites in curbing down the

rama as was not less effective. The evidence is provided by the transformation into

li gas of votive st pas, usually known as “Licchavi st pas” from the name of the royal

family that ruled over Nepal for a long time. They are provided with niches, but these are

empty because their images were chiselled away, and they have been deprived of their

21 The place name Andigr ma is found in an inscription dated AD 749 from the excavated site (Verardi

1992, I: 143 44).

12

finials (Wiesner 1980): an example comes from Chabahil, the C rumat Vih ra said to

have been erected by the daughter of A oka (figs. 8 9).

The local va av l s keep memory of the conflict that cornered the Buddhists in

a subaltern position, the responsibility of past events being attributed, as commonly done

in these texts, to a kar c rya. Although the saint probably never set foot in Nepal, we

cannot discard the information that these texts provide, because it integrates the evidence

given above. Some followers of Buddhism fled, we read, and some others were put to

death. Bhik u s were forced to marry, monks were equated to g hastas, sacred texts

were destroyed. Yet, in some places, a kara was obliged to leave the Bauddh marg s as

temple priests (Wright 1877: 118 23). We have, in essence, an account of the formation

and characteristics of New r Buddhism, forcibly subaltern and yet strongly identitarian.

In Orissa, we have the chance to see the K p likas in action. Reviled in Brah-

manical texts for the dirty jobs they executed, they were functionally connected with the

clean castes through mechanisms where the Brahmans, normally only associated with the

dak i abh va or performance of the five mah yajñas, could take part to heterodox forms

of worship, though with very strict limitations (van Kooij 1972: 29). The K p likas, be-

sides exercising magic and black magic, had the task of getting rid of “learned Brahmans”

(Lorenzen 1972: 74 77). The latter could hardly be the vaidikas or the t rthikas imbued

with ritualistic doctrine: the only learned Brahmans whose suppression makes sense were

those who had apostatized, especially the Buddhist controversialists who kept the ortho-

dox in check. The bhr ahan was the gravest of sins, and the mah vrata of the K -

p likas was exactly the penance for removing it (ibidem: 77 81). The split personality of

these ascetics reflects the equally split personality of iva, who, according to a little un-

derstood myth reported in the Matsya Pur a (184.81 94; vol. 2, pp. 168 69), cuts

Brahm ’s fifth head, resplendent for the asceticism. In the iva Pur a, it is K la-

bhairava, one of the v ma aspects of iva and reference God of the K p likas together

with C mu , the “left” aspect of the Goddess, who commits the murder

(Rudrasa hit : II.xxxiv.52; p. 434). iva is condemned to wander from t rtha to t rtha

until he is delivered from his sin in Benares.22 It was iva’s deed that the K p likas re-

enacted, thus moving from one place to the other and ready to kill and be pardoned again.

22 Lorenzen (1972: 77 81) examines the passage of the Matsya Pur a and provides references to other

relevant material. The V ra s M h tmya of the Matsya Pur a has long been thought to be the earliest in

the literature, but see now Bakker and Isaacson (2004).

13

The K p likas are represented in a frieze in the Vait l Deul at Bhubaneshwar, na-

ked and with ka hva gas, i.e. sticks surmounted by the skull of the victims (fig. 10). In

this temple, they are associated with other groups of Sivaites, a central position being

given here to Lakul a, who deeply restructured the movement of the P upatas in the

second or third century AD.23 The presiding deity in the garbhag ha of the temple is

C mu , flanked on both sides by the m t k s. Among the terrific forms of iva, we

note a form of Bhairava sitting in a fighting posture, holding a sacrificial knife: a severed

head, with the feature of the Buddha, lies in front of the God, and two chopped heads are

depicted on a tripod on the pedestal (fig. 11).24 Outside the temple, there is a much worn,

reworked Buddhist sculpture serving as base of a y pa, the sacrificial post (fig. 12), testi-

fying to the sacrifices – including human sacrifices – offered up to the Goddess.25 It was

made reusing on purpose an architectural feature from some destroyed Buddhist edifice

(cf. Verardi 2011b: 235 and esp. note 222 on p. 261).

In the eighth century, the brahmanization of the Deccan was a done deal, and it

was time to break through to the north: Orissa found itself caught between the orthodox

push from the South and the new Buddhist power of the P las. This situation put the stall

in Indian history for centuries, and did nothing but worsen. In both geostrategic and sym-

bolic terms, the objective was Magadha, the cradle of Buddhism, adjacent to both Bengal

and Orissa. Looking at the images of C mu scattered all over Orissa, we often see her

triumphantly seated either on a naked, dead man an asura often identifiable with a

rama a,26 or on a tribal r j threatened by the settlement policy of the t rthikas and

supporter of the rama as. A stele from Kalamisri (fig. 13) makes us understand who

suppressed the heretics and their allies: a K p lika is still hitting, while the prey animals

begin to feed on the corpse primarily the owl, the v hana of the Goddess.

23 Opinions on Lakul a, his religious role, the epoch when he lived, and even his historical reality, are ex-

tremely varied. I limit myself to recall, with Debala Mitra (1984: 104), the Mathur Gupta inscription of

AD 380, from which it may be inferred that a militant form of ivaism was already in existence. 24 The best description of this temple and the relevant iconographic material is still that provided by Pani-

grahi (1961: esp. 32 ff., 77 81, 233 34). 25 For the textual evidence on the balid na, see K lik Pur a, 55; vol. 2, pp. 385 ff. This pur a is dated

to the mid-ninth century. See also the apocryphal story in the biography of Xuanzang where the pilgrim is

said to have run the risk of being sacrificed to the Goddess (Beal 1911: 86 87). 26 Some of the dead, besides being naked in that they do not wear the cloth of the Veda, show elongated

ears and hair shaved or nearly shaved.

14

In the majority of cases iconographies are not so explicit, and even less explicit is,

in general, the epigraphic record, not to speak of the many elusive myths, but integrating

the various sources to create a credible scenario is possible. In the epigraphic record and

literary works, the opposition lion/elephant is mentioned very often: elephants are de-

scribed as the enemies won in battle by the conquering lions. We have whole temples de-

fended by rampart lions, and other built on crushed elephants. In the Kail an tha temple

at Kanchipuram, where rampart lions are ubiquitous, King R jasi ha Pallava (c. AD

700 730) states that Puru ottama (Vi u) was born to rescue from the ocean of sin the

sinking people swallowed by the monster known as the Kali Age, and defines himself

that pious king who has made the universe obedient to his orders: he has proved a royal

lion (R jasi ha) to the troops of the elephants of his foes (cf. Hultzsch 1890: no. 24, v. 8,

11; p. 14). The reference to the Kali Age brings us to wonder about the meaning of a re-

lief with iva as a teacher seating under a tree with a couple of deer (fig. 14), a scene

which is not simply modelled on that of the Buddha’s first sermon but is intended to re-

place it: the elephant head below is a cut-off head that we also see under the other temple

panels that dipict iva fighting the asuras. The meaning of lions and elephants, semanti-

cally ambiguous, becomes clear: their polarity appears, in context, as the opposition be-

tween the victorious orthodox kings (the lions) and the defeated Buddhists (the ele-

phants), the Buddha being the Elephant by definition.27

The best-known symbol of elephant hunting and killing is the

Gaj sura h ram rti of iva. The myth, set in Benares, is narrated in the K rma Pur a

in relation to the K ttiv se vara Li ga, the li ga of the Lord who is clad in the garment of

the elephant’s skin: the God has killed the daitya who had taken the form of an elephant,

and has made its hide his robe (K rma Pur a: 1.32.16 18; vol.1, p. 253). Here the myth

allegorizes the clash between the Sivaite devotees and the rama as, whose elder, the

Elephant, was killed as an intimidation act aimed at dispersing his followers. The Bud-

dhists-elephants are the major obstruction to the complete affirmation of iva, and they

must be removed, or obliged to submit.28 The poems of Campantar explain this clearly:

“Those Buddhists and mad Jains may slander speak. / Such speech befits the wanderers

from the way. / But he who came to earth and begged for alms, / He is the thief who stole

27 On the tropos Buddhists/elephants, see discussion in Verardi (2011b: 221ff.). See also id. (1999/2000)

for the identity Buddha-elephant. 28 As emphasized by the same text a little below (l. 21), the Kali Yuga “is terrible and full of evil”.

15

my heart away. / The raging elephant charged down at him; / O marvel! He but took and

wore his hide” (Kingsbury and Phillips 1921: no. 18; p. 27).

The exploits of iva and Vi u against the asuras and their mythicization in the

dev sura war barely conceal the identity Devas/Brahmans and Asuras/Heretics

(p sa as and n stikas). In a number of texts, the heretics are described as nagdas, na-

ked,29 because, as said above, they are deprived of the cloth of the Veda. This is the rea-

son why we can identify the asuras killed by K labhairava with the help of Ga e a and

the Goddesses in the yajña l (fig. 15) of the mammoth Kail an tha temple at Ellora in

upper Deccan. The Goddesses take directly part in the suppression of the asuras fighting

against them and drinking their blood, as is explained in the Dev M h tmya (8.7 62; pp.

63 67). What is then the yajña l ? It may be interpreted either as the actual place where

special y jñas, centred on the ritual killing of religious enemies were performed or as the

stone rendition of the temporary structure erected outside the temple where the heretics

were or had been executed.

4. The Vajray na Revolt

The Guhyasam ja Tantra delivers a radical attack to social institutions and socially ac-

cepted behaviours maintaining that no one can succeed in obtaining perfection through

difficult, painful processes and that one can succeed easily through the satisfaction of all

desires. Mah vairocana declares that the outcaste, workers and similar people find per-

fection in this y na, which is likewise for those who do not respect the life of the others,

who delight in telling falsehood, who steal other people’s property, who continuously

take recourse to sensual pleasures, etc. (Guhyasam ja Tantra: V. 3 7; cf. Gnoli 1983, pp.

631 32).30 One would say, at first glance, that this text actively favours the establishment

of a collapsed, broken-up society: the addressees of the initiates are not only the outcaste,

but the murderers, thieves, liars, immoral and incestuous persons, the defamers. However,

many of these epithets were just those given by the orthodox to their opponents in order

29 See e.g. V yu Pur a (II.16.31; vol. 2, p. 613). The text makes the example, among others, of Brahmans

who shave their hair “for nothing”. 30 For a complete translation of this tantra, the reader is referred to Gäng (1988).

16

to defame them, and we probably have to see in the text a deliberate provocation.31 We

should examine Indian Vajray na in its initial, generating context, limiting the level of

symbolic explanation to a minimum, and further considering that we mostly deal with

metaphors, not with symbols in the proper sense.

The authors of the Guhyasam ja Tantra and other texts addressed social sectors

only partly superimposable to those on which the Buddhists had staked to establish their

hegemony in the past. The “bourgeoisie” of trade and industry had disappeared a long

time but for Bengal, and the attempt of the Mah y na to counteract the agricultural poli-

cy of the t rthikas on their own ground had failed. The lands owned by the monasteries

were deeply infiltrated by theistic and caste practices, even where, as in Bengal, the

monastic institutions could not easily be blackmailed with the threat of destruction. It is

not possible, however, to explain the rise and success of the Vajray na abstracting from

the rise and success of P la power. In the second half of the eighth century, throughout

the ninth century and even later, the P las succeeded in controlling a large part of the

subcontinent and provided a safety net to the advocates of the new y na. Dharmap la

(AD 775 800) conquered geostrategic Kanauj, and extended his control on the Panj b

and Gandh ra (Kielhorn 1896 97: v. 12) and on parts of the Deccan, and his successor

Devap la (c. 800 840) was equally successful: with his successors, too, it seemed that

northern India, and even parts of the South, could be restored to the religion of Dharma.

The distinctive traits of the Vajray na are the legitimation of violence in order to

defend the religion and the acquisition at the theoretic and not only factual level of sexual

behaviours in open opposition to the caste-and-family social model of the t rthikas. Re-

garding violence, the Buddhists had learnt the lesson imparted to them by the violent

eight-century events. A rethinking of the whole matter had started even before, arguably

in connection with the violence experienced in Gupta times,32 but now the Guhyasam ja

Tantra explicitly invited concentration on the three-pronged vajra “that paralyzes all the

31 I no longer think that they were simply paradoxical (Verardi 2011b: 304), but that the followers of the

Vajray na made their own the insults of the t rthikas, transforming them into a weapon (as if to say: we are

murderers? Well, yes, that’s right: here we are…). 32 According to Asa ga’s Bodhisattvabh mi, the Bodhisattva is ready to be reborn in hell to kill those po-

tentially responsible for the slaying of innocent beings. He would fight to get back the property of the

sa gha or a st pa robbed by “thieves and bandits” (cf. MacFarlane 1995: 194, quoting from Unrai Wogi-

hara’s edition of the text, Tokyo 1930 36, 165 7). With the latter, the armed groups organized by the

t rthikas in order to intimidate the monks are probably alluded to (see Verardi 2011b: 231 ff.).

17

non-Buddhist teachers” projecting it on the head of the enemy, which will not prevail

against the buddhasainya, the army of the Buddha (cf. Davidson 2002: 193 94). In the

Sarvatath gatatattva Sa graha, Vajrap i warns the Tath gatas against the existence of

criminals such as Mahe vara and other Brahmanical gods, who are summoned by a man-

tra. iva is eventually annihilated by Vajrap i, by whom the other gods take also refuge.

He abandons his form of Mah deva and is reborn, entering the ma ala with another

name (cf. id. 1991: 200 2). The ma ala is thus the conceptualization of a territorial

space where Brahmanical power must be terminated with violent means if necessary to

allow the Buddhists to recreate the Kingdom of Dharma. The “great strategy” of yore, the

Mah y na, was ineffective and obsolete; a strategy of violence, exemplified by the vajra,

was now needed.

The social sectors involved in the Vajray na revolt included, besides the outcaste

and lower-caste people exemplified by the social origin of the eighty-four siddhas,33 the

“tribals” who opposed the reclamation of land and their forced annexation to the caste

society. The tribal chiefs of the Vindhyas are the men with long hair, often styled in

elaborate manner, lying dead under the Goddess or with their heads chopped off (fig. 16)

or, in certain cases, surrendering and imploring her clemency. We know them also from

the literature (the abaras are topical) and, if the explanatory model presented here makes

sense, from the very tradition on the origins of the Vajray na as well. A tribal chief

probably was king Indrabh ti of U iy na, where Vajray na Buddhism originated (Tucci

1949: 212 13).34 He may be a mythical king, but myth can be explored and contextual-

ized: it is reasonable to believe that he was one of those chiefs who took advantage of the

situation arisen with the military campaigns of Dharmap la and the temporary disruption

of the Brahmanical social order imposed in the Northwest by the h s (Verardi 2011a:

159ff., 168 ff.).

Buddhist images documenting violence as a political means started being pro-

duced as early as the ninth-tenth century in Bihar, where we see Apar jit triumphing on

33 The reader may go through the Catura tisiddha Prav tti, known to us through a Tibetan translation. Cf.

Robinson (1979); discussion in Verardi (2011b: 346 47). 34 On the Vajray na and North-western India, cf. also Davidson (2002: passim). The line of interpretation

according to which the origin of the Vajray na should be looked for in eastern India, particularly in Orissa

(identified with U iy a by some authors; see e.g. Sahu 1958: 152 ff.), is due to the overflowing amount

of textual and iconographic documentation that comes from that area a documentation, however, in

which converge very different materials indiscriminately labelled as “Tantric”.

18

a subjugated Ga e a (fig. 17). At N land , Trailokyavijaya stands victoriously on iva

and P rvat annihilated (fig. 18). On behalf of these iconographies, which would multiply

over time and grow in ferocity, it appears that it is difficult to distinguish between the

siddha movement and institutional Buddhism (the monasteries of N land , for instance,

where similar images were produced; cf. Misra 1998, III: 143, 149 ff.). We actually do

not know how long it took to the shocked Bodhisattvas, namely the great Mah y na

monks, attending the sa g ti in the Guhyasam ja Tantra (V. 8; cf. Gnoli 1983, p. 632) to

accept the the Vajra strategy. But texts, too, could hardly be produced without the active

collaboration of learned monks capable of rethinking the fundamentals of Buddhism.

In the (partly) ritualized sexual practices introduced into the system, scholars have

seen since long a giving in to pressure from the bottom of society. However, rather than a

giving in, we should speak of a conscious, even if risky strategy aimed at becoming fully

credible with the social sectors deemed essential to the revival of Buddhism, at mixing

with them.35 The taking on in person of sexual behaviours undermining social order is

just a reversal of strict monasticism, always criticized as anti-social by the t rthikas. We

are in front of a renewed, violent opposition to the caste-and-family model, as intolerably

disruptive as strict monasticism.36 The one and the other are also sharp alternatives to the

compromising householder monks.

The history of the lowermost castes and the untouchables has attracted little atten-

tion in India, where research is inhibited by the preconception according to which the

Brahmans would have created a social system where the conflict rate was low (though at

the price of reinforcing the caste system and creating the barrier of untouchability). This

view is a legacy of nineteenth-century historiography, which created an exotic India

compensating Europe and its violent history. The Vajray na revolt ravaged northern In-

dia and was a serious challenge to the establishment. We observe a progressive radicali-

35 This is also true of certain fringes of Sivaism (here we have mentioned the K palik s) as has often been

pointed out by scholars, and in Bengal it would be also true of Visnuism, which, using every means, would

inherit the Buddhist masses left without points of reference. But we cannot be satisfied with analyses that

stop at the phenomenological level. As I am trying to explain in these pages, the aims of the Buddhists and

of the theistic movements were very different. The purpose of the latter was to restore a rigid order in soci-

ety. 36 Sometimes we forget the meaning of even the best known events in the Buddha’s life: that Siddh rtha, in

contrast with the rules that a twice-born should have followed, left his young wife was an extremely pro-

vocative act.

19

zation of the uprising, and the open-air temples of the yogin s may be taken as indicators

of the increasingly difficult social, ethnic and inter-religious situation. These temples are

situated along the critical borderline constituted by the Vindhyas, from eastern Rajasthan

to Bhubaneshwar, and arise in places that are secluded but not distant from the local cen-

tres of power.37 The yogin s are a spatial projection of the Goddess in her v ma aspect,

and in fact, at the centre of the yogin enclosures (fig. 19) there usually is an aedicule

with the images of C mu and iva in one of his terrific forms. The enclosures are, on

reflection, a functional transformation of the garbhag ha of the Vait l Deul, where, as

we have seen, two rows of m t k s flank C mu on both sides, and of the yajña la of

Ellora, less structured though the latter is. It is unlikely that the people suppressed in

these enclosures were “normal” enemies killed in war: we are out of the logic of the bat-

tlefield, the natural place for the fallen to die; it is more probable that the victims were

killed in odium fidei. They were the protagonists of an insidious guerrilla war whose

stake was Bodhgay . That in a number of cases religious enemies were meant, appears in

a tenth-century stele from Bihar where C mu , after beheading a group of enemies

(mostly men of religion), takes her seat under the pipal tree on a naked asura who has the

shape of the Buddha, whom she has dislodged from his throne. A few other chopped-off

heads, two of which showing u s, are in the sacrificial basin in the lower part of the

stele, together with amputated legs and arms (figs. 20 21).

The Sivaites were not alone in the attempt at eradicating Buddhism. In the ninth

century, the Vi uites gained control of Gay , where they appointed the Gay v las, a

lower class of Brahmans performers of r ddhas. r ddha rituals are associated with the

instalment of Vi u-Gad dhara in the town’s main temple:38 with his “sharp axe”, the

God had hewn “the tree of great sin” (V mana Pur a: 50.15, pp. 424 25). The tree is

naturally that of the Awakening. In fact, the Visnuites appropriated Bodhgay , as appears

from the archaeological documentation (F. Barba in Verardi 2011b: 409 11) and as is at-

tested to in the Kalki Pur a, a late composite work preserving an extremely valuable

37 For a description of the yogin temples, I refer the reader to Dehejia (1986) and, in relation to Orissa, to

Donaldson (2002), where he will find a lot of interesting material. These authors would probably not share

my view on the matter, which I have discussed in greater detail elsewhere (Verardi (2011b: 288 89,

294 95). 38 Vi u Gad dhara, a violent manifestation of the God, is first mentioned in an inscription datable to AD

1058 (Sircar 1964 65: v. 9). With reference to Bodhgay , the frightful nature of Vi u is made explicit

also in the Gay sura myth, first analyzed by Rajendralala Mitra (1878: 9 ff.).

20

material. It contains a detailed description of the battle of K ka a (Bodhgay /Magadha)

waged by Kalki, the last avat ra of Vi u, where the Buddhists are said to have drawn

up in battle order accompanied by “millions of outcaste” (Kalki Pur a: II.vii. 38; p. 80).

5. The Suppression of Buddhism in Magadha and Eastern India

The “Turu kas” started advancing into northern India when the conflict between the

t rthikas and the Vajray nists was reaching its apex. Indian powers fought against the

Turu kas for long, while the Buddhists tried, in places, to benefit from the situation

weakening the t rthikas: besides stirring up the lower classes, they often sided with the

Muslims, as had happened in eighth-century Sind, where the good relationships between

Muslims and Buddhists are well documented.39 When the t rthikas realized that they

would never defeat the Turu kas in battle, they strove to separate the Muslims from the

Buddhists striking the latter very hard. Finally, the t rthikas compromised with the invad-

ers, particularly under the Delhi Sultanate (1206 1290). The compromise allowed them

to re-establish social order in certain territories, to retain an operational political space

and reorganize themselves.

The actors on the Indian political scene were very numerous, but here we focus

on the Gah av las, who ruled Madhyade a from Kanauj and Benares and were, in

places, supportive of the Buddhists, and on the Senas. The latter were an orthodox dy-

nasty original from South India that put an end to P la rule in Bengal and inflicted a mor-

tal blow to the Buddhist monasteries of eastern India. In AD 1128 29, the Gah av la

king Govindacandra donated six villages to the community of kyabhik us of the Jeta-

vana at Sravasti (Sahni 1911 12), a policy followed by his local vassals, too (Kielhorn

1888: 1. 15 16; cf. Niyogi 1959: 258). Two of his queens were Buddhist an early

model of differentiated social intervention that was again put to test. Who were the

kyabhik us? Our closest chronological and spatial reference are the kyabhik us, or

householder monks, of New r Buddhism a crucial, though little-used “fossil guide” to

Indian medieval Buddhism.40 It is reasonable to think that the Gah av la donations

39 Maclean (1989: esp. 51 52, 58, but passim). For Sind as a place where the fundamentals were fixed for

the later interaction between Buddhists and Muslims, cf. Verardi (2011b: 350ff.). 40 John Locke, to whom we owe the most valuable contribution to New r Buddhism, maintains that the lat-

ter was probably structured on the presence of householder monks, the kyabhik us or kyava as, since

its inception (Locke 1985: 4, 484).

21

went to the advantage of the more integrated, non-violent sectors of Buddhism. Queen

Kum radev , although not endowed with all the royal prerogatives (Niyogi 1959: 199),

donated a vih ra to the sthav ra of the Buddhist community of Sarnath to honour the

Dharmacakra Jina, whose image she also restored (Konow 1907 8: v. 20 23).41

Govindacandra was exposed, from the west, to the attacks by the Muslim rulers of

Panjab, to whom he paid tribute (D.C. Ganguly in R.C. Majumdar 1957: 51), and, from

the east, to those of the hardliner Senas. His successor Jayacandra (c. AD 1170 93)

found himself in an impasse that led him to radical choices. He owned a white elephant

(Niyogi 1959: 198) an animal, and a colour, laden with precise symbolism in Bud-

dhism.42 We have a clue regarding his policy from the fact that his dik aguru was r mi-

tra, a siddha, whom he praises because at the Mah bodhi he had recovered numerous lost

scriptures (N. Sanyal 1929: esp. 11.7, 11; Niyogi 1959: 198, 210, 260), arguably those

pertaining to the third setting in motion of the Wheel of the Law. Kanauj was lost, and

the dynasty controlled only parts of its former territories from Benares. It is not difficult

to imagine the opposition that, exactly in Benares, the policy of the king had to meet. At

Sarnath, a very large Brahmanical temple was built in the northern area, where the so-

called “Monastery I” is located. The area appears as a walled compound accessible

through huge gateways, erected on a dismantled Buddhist monastery the inner court of

which was made to coincide with the courtyard of the new building (F. Barba in Verardi

2011b: 427 ff.). “Monastery I” started being called “Dharmacakra Jinavih ra” (Sahni

1923: 28) with reference to the donation of Kum radev , but the relevant inscription is

not associated with “Monastery I” (Mani 2005 6). At least fourteen Brahmanical sculp-

tures and architectural fragments were found in the area (cf. F. Barba in Verardi 2011b).

D.R. Sahni, who carried out excavations at Sarnath after John Marshall, understood that

these fragments must have belonged to a Brahmanical temple (Sahni 1914: 243 44) but

was unable to locate it because he failed to grasp the stratigraphic conundrum. Around

AD 1200, the Lord of Isipatana may be said to have been iva S ra gan tha (hence S r-

n th), usurping the park and the deer from kyamuni.

41 Kum radev refers explicitly to the Jina, and does not seem to have paid homage to a form of iva such

as A te vara that assimilates the Buddha and bestows “the reward of liberation upon women” (Sanderson

2004: 254). 42 The white colour is the sum of all other colours, thus being “central”. This is why the Buddha appears to

Queen M y as a white elephant, and why the colour of Vairocana (a hypostasis of the Buddha), whose

position is central in relation to the other Buddhas, is white.

22

Research work on the Sena dynasty is still limited, and scholars continue to ad-

here to the misleading construct of a unified P la-Sena period. The concern of the Senas,

while the Turu kas were advancing towards the middle and eastern Ganges valley, was to

establish var ramadharma in the territories that came under their rule. King Vall -

lasena (c. 1158 1179) started abusing the Buddhist merchants, who were numerous in

Bengal. Vallabha hya, the richest merchant and banker of the region and leader of the

Son r-Vani s, had always financed the king: when the latter showed the intention to

march against Magadha, he refused to do so, and the Vani s were forcibly expelled from

Bengal. Those who remained were downgraded: the Brahmans were prohibited from

teaching them and officiating for them (H. P. Sh stri 1911: 21 22). The Senas started a

radical administrative-territorial overhaul of the former P la territories. Judging from the

vijayak etras established in the various gr mas, villages were conceived as administra-

tive and political units of the new power and milestones in the creation of a caste agrarian

society. The largest concentration of these new centres was in the navigable sector of

Va ga and near the estuarine mouth of the Bay of Bengal (R. Sanyal 2008 9:101). This

may be construed as a determined attempt at curbing down trade or at least the trade

that was in Buddhist hands.

The Senas are responsible for the attacks on Buddhist monasteries. We have an

echo of the attack against Somapura/Paharpur from a Nalanda inscription, according to

which “the ascetic Karu a r mitra … when his house was burning, (being) set on fire by

the approaching army of Va g la, attached (himself) to the pair of lotus feet of the Bud-

dha, (and) went to heaven” (N.G. Majumdar 1931 32: v. 2 3). We also know of the at-

tacks against Vikramasila/Antichak, whose end is commonly but groundlessly attributed

to Bakhtiy r-i Khalj , the military adventurer who first opened to the Muslims the gates

of eastern India in the early thirteenth century and who never passed through the region

of Vikramasila to reach Bengal (Chaudhary 1978: 217 18). A Brahmanical temple was

built on the Buddhist ruins of the monastery before the arrival of the Muslims, to be

abandoned later on. Other attempts to destroy the monastery had already taken place. An

inscription on a pillar stump mentions a local chief, Sahura of Camp , who had dispelled

a planned attack by “the rulers of Ba ga” (Verma 2001, II: 303): evidently, the Senas.43

43 The archaeologists responsible for the excavations at Antichak show the traditional reticence and misun-

derstanding about the dynamics of destruction of the Buddhist monasteries of eastern India. B.S. Verma

(2011: 17) writes that “[t]he introduction of tantra and the worship of large number of gods and goddesses

23

At Odantapur /Bihar Sharif the monastery, which had already withstood repeated

onslaughts of Vall lasena, was adjacent to the P la camp (Ali 1406 H/1985, I A: 50). The

Muslim attack is narrated in a famous passage of the abaq t-i N ir (I: 551 52). The

Muslims were apparently unaware of the real nature of the site, and were upset when

they discovered the truth. There were no soldiers in the fortress, as became clear after the

killing of the monks, and we must think that the Turu kas, who based their field opera-

tions on the information provided by local informers inevitably, t rthikas were led to

a place that was not defended at all. The Ratnodadhi library at N land , we learn from

the Tibetan sources, was put on fire by the t rthikas,44 and Dharmasv min, who resided

there in 1234 35, reports a story whose sense is that the Muslims had been instructed to

launch an attack on the monastery, but gave the game away so that the monks could save

themselves (Roerich 1959: 33b 34a; pp. 31 32, 93 94).

The rivalries between Buddhists played a role in accelerating the collapse of the

religion. The monks of Sri Lanka, who had a large part in the management of Bodhgay

since Gupta times, were opposed to Mah y nists and Vajray nists. Dharmasv min was

rebuked for carrying with him a manuscript of the A tas ha rik Prajñ p ramit , which

he had to hide, the censor being the r vaka keeper of Vajr sana proper (ibidem:

19b 20a; pp. 18 19, 73 74). T ran tha reports an episode that he attributes to the time of

Dharmap la, but which is probably later on behalf of the fact that it is about an image of

Heruka and the “many treatises on Tantra”. The r vakas of the Island and their allies

burnt the books, and smashed the image into pieces (T ran tha: 109A, p. 279). Inside the

three gates giving access to the Mah bodhi Temple and the Vajr sana, only the sacristans

could sleep: the point is that there were “three hundred sacristans native of Ceylon, who

belong[ed] to the r vaka school; other (schools) ha[d] no such right” (Roerich 1959:

19b; pp. 18, 73). Why Indian Buddhist monks and priests were excluded from control of

the Vajr sana? The only possible explanation is that the foreign monks helped in clean-

sing the site from the supporters and sympathizers of the rebels. The r vakas had no fol-

lowing in India, they were not a threat, and could be sent back home at any time.

The reversal of alliances, which caused the Buddhists to fight on two fronts,

against the t rthikas and against the Muslims, and eventually be suppressed, is exempli-

in this new form of Buddhism narrowed down the gulf between Buddhism and Hinduism and it did not

take long time for the Buddhists to transfer their allegiance wholely to the Hindu gods and goddesses […]”. 44 dPag bsam ljon bzang I.92 and Index, i (“Kaku a Sidha”). Cf. Vidyabhusana (1921: 516).

24

fied by the creation of the state of Mithil , which included northern Bihar and a part of

Magadha, with Bodhgay . Dharmasv min reports that the few monks residing there in

1235 camouflaged the entrance to the Mah bodhi temple with an image of iva: thereby

the Turu kas would not attack it (ibidem: 64). This means that the Muslims spared the re-

ligious buildings of the t rthikas, being induced to attack those of the Buddhists. The

kingdom of Mithil under the Kar a kings and their successors kept its independence

thanks to the alliance that king Narasi ha made with the Sult n of Delhi, to whom he

paid tribute: he helped him to capture the whole of South Bihar in the early 13th century.

Mithil ’s “national” poet Vidy pati (c. 1352 1448) would account for the alliance be-

tween king Sakrasi ha (1296 1316) and ‘Al al-D n Khalj . He considered Ibr h m

Sh h, the Sharq ruler of Jaunpur (1402 1440), second only to God, and his capital a

second Amar vat , and persuaded him to organize a military expedition to put an end to

the still chaotic conditions prevailing in the country (Chaudhary 1970: 71). The majority

of historians are reticent on what took place in the region, and we must be content with

either short, apodictic statements or cursory admissions.45

Regarding the Buddhist communities that survived in Bengal and Orissa until the

sixteenth century, their history remains largely to be written.

45 B.J. Hasrat, a distant heir of those who, in Nepal, suffered the backlash of the events, has observed, for

instance, that “… in the plains of India … the prosecution of the Buddhists was furious root and branch

eradication in fact” (Hasrat 1970: 39, note 1).

25

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Fig. 1. Namakkal, Tamil Nadu. De-tail of Trivikrama panel with V mana as the Buddha, showing elongated ears and shaved head. 8th century. From Sivaramamurti (1980: 131).

Fig. 2. Pipri, Kapilbastu District (Nepal).

Heads of Sivaite ascetics found in the

excavations in association with other cul-

tic material. 2nd 3rd century AD. From

Verardi (2011b: 146).

Figures

35

Fig. 3. Kanchipuram. Gal-

lery in the Vaiku ha

Perum temple com-

pound. King Nandivarman

II Pallavamalla adminis-

tering justice and impale-

ment of Buddhists. Mid-

8th century. From Verardi

(2011b: 226, fig. 4).

Fig. 4. Harigaon, Kathmandu. Rubbing of inscription on Garu astambha. Sec-ond half of the 8th century. From Regmi (1983, III: XXVII A, B).

36

Figs. 5a, b. Harigaon,

Kathmandu. Lowermost

chambers of st pa razed to

ground after AD 749, with

the original filling of sand

(fig. 5a) and after emptying

the ku as (fig. 5b). Photo

IsIAO, Rome.

Fig. 6. Harigaon, Kathmandu. Section showing floor of Vi u temple covering the

foundations of Buddhist monuments. Simplified rendering of the stratigraphy of the

excavation (G. Verardi and G. Veneroso).

37

Fig. 7. Harigaon, Kathmandu.

Trial-trench at the base of

Garu astambha, showing

brick foundation. Photo

IsIAO, Rome.

Fig. 8. Chabahil, Kathmandu.

St pa with finial removed and

empty niches. 8th century. From

Wiesner (1980: fig. XII/3).

Fig. 9. Detail of preceding, showing

niche with chiselled-off image. From

Wiesner (1980: fig. XII/4).

38

Fig. 10. Bhubaneshwar, Vait l

Deul. Detail of frieze with K -

p likas. Second half of the 8th

century. From Donaldson (2002,

III: fig. 627).

Fig. 11. Bhubaneshwar, Vait l Deul.

Bhairava and beheaded asura in the

shape of the Buddha. Second half of

the 8th century. From Verardi

(2011b: 236, fig. 6).

Fig. 12. Bhubaneshwar, Vait l

Deul. Reworked Buddhist architec-

tural piece used as base of y pa

outside temple door. From

Donaldson (2002, III: fig. 1).

39

Fig. 13. Kalamisri, Orissa. C mu seated on tribal chief killed by

a K p lika. 9th century. From Donaldson (2002, III: fig. 261).

40

Fig. 14. Kanchipuram,

Temple of Kaila an -

tha. iva as teacher un-

der a tree with two deer.

Chopped elephant head

below. Mid-8th century.

Fig. 15. Ellora, Temple

of Kail an tha. Detail

of yajña la with

Bhairava, Ga e a, a

Goddess and two dead

asuras. First half of the

8th century. From Ver-

ardi (2011b: 270, fig. 9).

41

Fig. 16. Hirapur, Bhubaneswar.

Temple of the Sixty-four yogin s.

Yogin holding skull-cup and knife

and standing on chopped-off head of

tribal. Mid-10th century. From De-

hejia (1986: 102).

Fig. 17. Bihar. Apar jit subjugates

Ga e a. 10th century. From Saras-

wati (1977: fig. 184).

42

Fig. 18. N land . Trailokyavijaya.

10th 11th century.

Fig. 19. Ranipur-Jharial, Orissa. Temple of the yogin s. Mid-10th

century. From Dehejia (1986: fig. on p. 41).

43

Fig. 20. Bihar. C mu seated on

dead asura in the shape of the Bud-

dha. 10th century. Courtesy National

Museum, New Delhi.

Fig. 21. Detail of pre-

ceding, with dead a-

sura/Buddha and vic-

tims.

Issues in the History of Indian Buddhism

Giovanni Verardi

y