Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch Volume III Part 1

Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch.

Vol. 3.

by Charles Eliot.

BOOK VI

BUDDHISM OUTSIDE INDIA

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

EXPANSION OF INDIAN INFLUENCE

INTRODUCTORY

The subject of this Book is the expansion of Indian influence throughout Eastern Asia and the neighbouring islands. That influence is clear and wide-spread, nay almost universal, and it is with justice that we speak of Further India and the Dutch call their colonies Neerlands Indi. For some early chapters in the story of this expansion the dates and details are meagre, but on the whole the investigator's chief difficulty is to grasp and marshal the ma.s.s of facts relating to the development of religion and civilization in this great region.

The spread of Hindu thought was an intellectual conquest, not an exchange of ideas. On the north-western frontier there was some reciprocity, but otherwise the part played by India was consistently active and not receptive. The Far East counted for nothing in her internal history, doubtless because China was too distant and the other countries had no special culture of their own. Still it is remarkable that whereas many Hindu missionaries preached Buddhism in China, the idea of making Confucianism known in India seems never to have entered the head of any Chinese.

It is correct to say that the sphere of India's intellectual conquests was the East and North, not the West, but still Buddhism spread considerably to the west of its original home and entered Persia.

Stein discovered a Buddhist monastery in "the terminal marshes of the Helmund" in Seistan[1] and Bamian is a good distance from our frontier. But in Persia and its border lands there were powerful state religions, first Zoroastrianism and then Islam, which disliked and hindered the importation of foreign creeds and though we may see some resemblance between Sufis and Vedantists, it does not appear that the Moslim civilization of Iran owed much to Hinduism.

But in all Asia north and east of India, excluding most of Siberia but including the Malay Archipelago, Indian influence is obvious. Though primarily connected with religion it includes much more, such as architecture, painting and other arts, an Indian alphabet, a vocabulary of Indian words borrowed or translated, legends and customs. The whole life of such diverse countries as Tibet, Burma, and Java would have been different had they had no connection with India.

In these and many other regions the Hindus must have found a low state of civilization, but in the Far East they encountered a culture comparable with their own. There was no question of colonizing or civilizing rude races. India and China met as equals, not hostile but also not congenial, a priest and a statesman, and the statesman made large concessions to the priest. Buddhism produced a great fermentation and controversy in Chinese thought, but though its fortunes varied it hardly ever became as in Burma and Ceylon the national religion. It was, as a Chinese Emperor once said, one of the two wings of a bird. The Chinese characters did not give way to an Indian alphabet nor did the Confucian Cla.s.sics fall into desuetude.

The subjects of Chinese and j.a.panese pictures may be Buddhist, the plan and ornaments of their temples Indian, yet judged as works of art the pictures and temples are indigenous. But for all that one has only to compare the China of the Hans with the China of the T'angs to see how great was the change wrought by India.

This outgrowing of Indian influence, so long continued and so wide in extent, was naturally not the result of any one impulse. At no time can we see in India any pa.s.sion of discovery, any fever of conquest such as possessed Europe when the New World and the route to the East round the Cape were discovered. India's expansion was slow, generally peaceful and attracted little attention at home. Partly it was due to the natural permeation and infiltration of a superior culture beyond its own borders, but it is equally natural that this gradual process should have been sometimes accelerated by force of arms. The Hindus produced no Tamerlanes or Babers, but a series of expeditions, spread over long ages, but still not few in number, carried them to such distant goals as Ceylon, Java and Camboja.

But the diffusion of Indian influence, especially in China, was also due to another agency, namely religious propaganda and the deliberate despatch of missions. These missions seem to have been exclusively Buddhist for wherever we find records of Hinduism outside India, for instance in Java and Camboja, the presence of Hindu conquerors or colonists is also recorded.[2] Hinduism accompanied Hindus and sometimes spread round their settlements, but it never attempted to convert distant and alien lands. But the Buddhists had from the beginning the true evangelistic temper: they preached to all the world and in singleness of purpose: they had no political support from India. Many as were the charges brought against them by hostile Confucians, it was never suggested that they sought political or commercial privileges for their native land. It was this simple disinterested att.i.tude which enabled Buddhism, though in many ways antipathetic to the Far East, to win its confidence.

Ceylon is the first place where we have a record of the introduction of Indian civilization and its entry there ill.u.s.trates all the phenomena mentioned above, infiltration, colonization and propaganda.

The island is close to the continent and communication with the Tamil country easy, but though there has long been a large Tamil population with its own language, religion and temples, the fundamental civilization is not Tamil. A Hindu called Vijaya who apparently started from the region of Broach about 500 B.C. led an expedition to Ceylon and introduced a western Hindu language. Intercourse with the north was doubtless maintained, for in the reign of Asoka we find the King of Ceylon making overtures to him and receiving with enthusiasm the missionaries whom he sent. It is possible that southern India played a greater part in this conversion than the accepted legend indicates, for we hear of a monastery built by Mahinda near Tanjore.[3] But still language, monuments and tradition attest the reality of the connection with northern India.

It is in Asoka's reign too that we first hear of Indian influence spreading northwards. His Empire included Nepal and Kashmir, he sent missionaries to the region of Himavanta, meaning apparently the southern slopes of the Himalayas, and to the Kambojas, an ambiguous race who were perhaps the inhabitants of Tibet or its border lands.

The Hindu Kush seems to have been the limit of his dominions but tradition ascribes to this period the joint colonization of Khotan from India and China.

Sinhalese and Burmese traditions also credit him with the despatch of missionaries who converted Suvarn?abhmi or Pegu. No mention of this has been found in his own inscriptions, and European critics have treated it with not unnatural scepticism for there is little indication that Asoka paid much attention to the eastern frontiers of his Empire. Still I think the question should be regarded as being _sub judice_ rather than as answered in the negative.

Indian expeditions to the East probably commenced, if not in the reign of Asoka, at least before our era. The Chinese Annals[4] state that Indian Emba.s.sies reached China by sea about 50 B.C. and the Questions of Milinda allude to trade by this route: the Ramayana mentions Java and an inscription seems to testify that a Hindu king was reigning in Champa (Annam) about 150 A.D. These dates are not so precise as one could wish, but if there was a Hindu kingdom in that distant region in the second century it was probably preceded by settlements in nearer halting places, such as the Isthmus of Kra[5] or Java, at a considerably anterior date, although the inscriptions discovered there are not earlier than the fifth century A.D.

Java seems to have left some trace in Indian tradition, for instance the proverb that those who go to Java do not come back, and it may have been an early distributing centre for men and merchandize in those seas. But Ligor probably marks a still earlier halting place. It is on the same coast as the Mon kingdom of Thaton, which had connection with Conjevaram by sea and was a centre of Pali Buddhism.

At any rate there was a movement of conquest and colonization in these regions which brought with it Hinduism and Mahayanism, and established Hindu kingdoms in Java, Camboja, Champa and Borneo, and another movement of Hinayanist propaganda, apparently earlier, but of which we know less.[6] Though these expeditions both secular and religious probably took ship on the east coast of India, _e.g._ at Masulipatam or the Seven PaG.o.das, yet their original starting point may have been in the west, such as the district of Badami or even Gujarat, for there were trade routes across the Indian Peninsula at an early date.[7]

It is curious that the early history of Burma should be so obscure and in order not to repeat details and hypotheses I refer the reader to the chapter dealing specially with this country. From an early epoch Upper Burma had connection with China and Bengal by land and Lower Burma with Orissa and Conjevaram by sea. We know too that Pali Buddhism existed there in the sixth century, that it gained greatly in power in the reign of Anawrata (_c._ 1060) and that in subsequent centuries there was a close ecclesiastical connection with Ceylon.

Siam as a kingdom is relatively modern but like Burma it has been subject to several influences. The Siamese probably brought some form of Buddhism with them when they descended from the north to their present territories. From the Cambojans, their neighbours and at one time their suzerains, they must have acquired some Hinduism and Mahayanism, but they ended by adopting Hinayanism. The source was probably Pegu but learned men from Ligor were also welcomed and the ecclesiastical pre-eminence of Ceylon was accepted.

We thus see how Indian influence conquered Further India and the Malay Archipelago and we must now trace its flow across Central Asia to China and j.a.pan, as well as the separate and later stream which irrigated Tibet and Mongolia.

Tradition as mentioned ascribes to Asoka some connection with Khotan and it is probable that by the beginning of our era the lands of the Oxus and Tarim had become Buddhist and acquired a mixed civilization in which the Indian factor was large. As usual it is difficult to give precise dates, but Buddhism probably reached China by land a little before rather than after our era and the prevalence of Gandharan art in the cities of the Tarim basin makes it likely that their efflorescence was not far removed in time from the Gandharan epoch of India. The discovery near Khotan of official doc.u.ments written in Prakrit makes colonization as well as religious missions probable.

Further, although the movements of Central Asian tribes commonly took the form of invading India, yet the current of culture was, on the whole, in the opposite direction. The Kushans and others brought with them a certain amount of Zoroastrian theology and h.e.l.lenistic art, but the compound resulting from the mixture of these elements with Buddhism was re-exported to the north and to China.

I shall discuss below the grounds for believing that Buddhism was known in China before A.D. 62, the date when the Emperor Ming Ti is said to have despatched a mission to enquire about it. For some time many of its chief luminaries were immigrants from Central Asia and it made its most rapid progress in that disturbed period of the third and fourth centuries when North China was split up into contending Tartar states which both in race and politics were closely connected with Central Asia. Communication with India by land became frequent and there was also communication _vi_ the Malay Archipelago, especially after the fifth century, when a double stream of Buddhist teachers began to pour into China by sea as well as by land. A third tributary joined them later when Khubilai, the Mongol conqueror of China, made Lamaism, or Tibetan Buddhism, the state religion.

Tibetan Buddhism is a form of late Indian Mahayanism with a considerable admixture of Hinduism, exported from Bengal to Tibet and there modified not so much in doctrine as by the creation of a powerful hierarchy, curiously a.n.a.logous to the Roman Church. It is unknown in southern China and not much favoured by the educated cla.s.ses in the north, but the Lamaist priesthood enjoys great authority in Tibet and Mongolia, and both the Ming and Ching dynasties did their best to conciliate it for political reasons.

Lamaism has borrowed little from China and must be regarded as an invasion into northern Asia and even Europe[8] of late Indian religion and art, somewhat modified by the strong idiosyncrasy of the Tibetan people. This northern movement was started by the desire of imitation, not of conquest. At the beginning of the seventh century the King of Tibet, who had dealings with both India and China, sent a mission to the former to enquire about Buddhism and in the eighth and eleventh centuries eminent doctors were summoned from India to establish the faith and then to restore it after a temporary eclipse.

In Korea, Annam, and especially in j.a.pan, Buddhism has been a great ethical, religious and artistic force and in this sense those countries owe much to India. Yet there was little direct communication and what they received came to them almost entirely through China. The ancient Champa was a Hindu kingdom a.n.a.logous to Camboja, but modern Annam represents not a continuation of this civilization but a later descent of Chinese culture from the north. j.a.pan was in close touch with the Chinese just at the period when Buddhism was fermenting their whole intellectual life and j.a.panese thought and art grew up in the glow of this new inspiration, which was more intense than in China because there was no native antagonist of the same strength as Confucianism.

In the following chapters I propose to discuss the history of Indian influence in the various countries of Eastern Asia, taking Ceylon first, followed by Burma and Siam. Whatever may have been the origin of Buddhism in these two latter they have had for many centuries a close ecclesiastical connection with Ceylon. Pali Buddhism prevails in all, as well as in modern Camboja.

The Indian religion which prevailed in ancient Camboja was however of a different type and similar to that of Champa and Java. In treating of these Hindu kingdoms I have wondered whether I should not begin with Java and adopt the hypothesis that the settlements established there sent expeditions to the mainland and Borneo.[9] But the history of Java is curiously fragmentary whereas the copious inscriptions of Camboja and Champa combined with Chinese notices give a fairly continuous chronicle. And a glance at the map will show that if there were Hindu colonists at Ligor it would have been much easier for them to go across the Gulf of Siam to Camboja than _vi_ Java. I have therefore not adopted the hypothesis of expansion from Java (while also not rejecting it) nor followed any chronological method but have treated of Camboja first, as being the Hindu state of which on the whole we know most and then of Champa and Java in comparison with it.

In the later sections of the book I consider the expansion of Indian influence in the north. A chapter on Central Asia endeavours to summarize our rapidly increasing knowledge of this meeting place of nations. Its history is closely connected with China and naturally leads me to a somewhat extended review of the fortunes and achievements of Buddhism in that great land, and also to a special study of Tibet and of Lamaism. I have treated of Nepal elsewhere. For the history of religion it is not a new province, but simply the extreme north of the Indian region where the last phase of decadent Indian Buddhism which practically disappeared in Bengal still retains a nominal existence.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: _Geog. Jour_. Aug., 1916, p. 362.]

[Footnote 2: The presence of Brahmans at the Courts of Burma and Siam is a different matter. They were expressly invited as more skilled in astrology and state ceremonies than Buddhists.]

[Footnote 3: Watters, _Yan Chuang_, vol. II. p. 228.]

[Footnote 4: But not contemporary Annals. The Liang Annals make the statement about the reign of Hsan Li 73-49 B.C.]

[Footnote 5: Especially at Ligor or Dharmaraja.]

[Footnote 6: The statement of I-Ching that a wicked king destroyed Buddhism in Funan is important.]

[Footnote 7: See Fleet in _J.R.A.S._ 1901, p. 548.]

[Footnote 8: There are settlements of Kalmuks near Astrakhan who have Lama temples and maintain a connection with Tibet.]

[Footnote 9: The existence of a Hindu kingdom on the _East_ Coast of Borneo in 400 A.D. or earlier is a strong argument in favour of colonization from Java. Expeditions from any other quarter would naturally have gone to the _West_ Coast. Also there is some knowledge of Java in India, but apparently none of Camboja or Champa. This suggests that Java may have been the first halting place and kept up some slight connection with the mother country.]

CHAPTER x.x.xV

CEYLON

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