On Broken Buddhas

Among the many disturbing videos that turned up on twitter last week, there was one from North West Pakistan.

At first glance it looks a benign video of rural development - on what seems like the the outskirts of a village, a few villagers are laying a pathway through the hills. In their effort to remove some obstruction on the ground, a man is seen smashing a sledge hammer on an oblong piece of stone. The camera then pans closer to show us that this is not ordinary stone that his being smashed. It was a 1700 year old statue of the Buddha. You recoil with shock, memories of the Taliban destroying the Bamiyan Buddhas with tanks and artillery comes to mind.

The place where this happened in called Takht-e-Bahi. When I looked this up on the web, interesting details emerged - this place is about 15km from the town of Mardan in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, and is famous for the ruins of an "exceptionally well preserved" Buddhist Monastery. Exceptional perhaps because hardly any archeological site older than a 1000 years has survived in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Conjectural restoration of the Monastery

However, I was in for a surprise and my shallow assumptions were soon busted. The Buddhist monastery here was built in the 1st century CE and thrived through the centuries under the Kushans and the Parthians, but it is under the Huns - especially Toramana and his son, Mihirakula - that this area witnessed genocides and wholesale destruction of Bushiest monasteries. In other words, the Takht-e-Bahi monastery was destroyed long before Mohammad was born and Islam as a religion was even conceived!

So who were the Huns? Why did the father-and-son duo of Toramana (493-518 CE) and Mihirakula (515-540 CE) get so upset with the Buddhists? According to a version recorded by the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim-monk Xuangzang (Hsuan Tsang):

"...initially Mihirakula was interested in learning about Buddhism, and asked the monks to send him a teacher; the monks insulted him by recommending a servant of his own householder for the purpose. This incident is said to have turned Mihirakula virulently anti-Buddhist. Xuangzang states that he destroyed 1,600 monasteries in Gandhara and had 9,000 men killed or sold into slavery on the banks of the Indus."

Further, according to the historian DN Jha (1998) -

"The Huna king Toramana had Vaishnavite association but was converted to Jainism and this tyrant son Mihirakula, ruling from Shakala (modern Sialkot), was a devout Shaiva who founded the temple of Mihireshvara. He persecuted the Buddhists as was later sone by Shashanka, a fanatic ruler of Bengal"

It is almost a relief to be reminded that destruction of temples was not the monopoly of Islamic fanatics, zealots and conquerers.

At the same time it is ironic that the descendents of the people who suffered the most under the waves of conquests, today consider themselves so far removed from their own roots that they consider it an honor to destroy, in the name of religion, the very things that they ought to proudly display, in their own museums!

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jH0AnRXCzI
* The past is a different country (FT 2014)- https://www.thefridaytimes.com/the-past-is-a-different-country/
* http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Ancient-statue-of-Buddha-destroyed-as-un-Islamic-50623.html
* Jha DN (1998): Against Communalising History, Social Scientist, Vol 26 (on JSTOR) - https://www.jstor.org/stable/3517941?read-now=1&seq=5#page_scan_tab_contents

* A Neelakantan (2018) - https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/why-d-n-jhas-claim-that-ancient-hindus-were-given-to-violence-is-far-from-the-truth
* Pinterest - Takht-e-Bahi Gandhara sculptures -https://www.pinterest.com/sophialiu0808/takht-e-bhai-gandhara/

A Quake & Silence

At around 2:20 pm today, my chair trembled and moved on its own.

In the few seconds that followed, I closed my eyes and soaked in that familiar, dreadful silence.

Two years ago, on 7 March 2011, I was on my dining chair having a late lunch at Tsukuba-U when the 'biggest earthquake in recorded history' hit us in Japan. In the hours, days and weeks that followed, we moved from one evacuation center to another; struggled to access food and drinking water...and yet considered ourselves very, very fortunate to be a few dozen miles away from the tsunami that  devastated the Tohoku coastline left about 18,000 people dead or missing.

Today's tremors ended in a few seconds but the same old questions dangled in the silence: where was the epicenter? How many houses have come crashing down? How many lives have been lost?

The simple fact that the lights were still on and that the networks were still working told us that the tragedy had taken place somewhere far away. Still, nothing turned up on the internet until Reuters posted an twitter-update ten minutes later.

The complete story is now in -- that far-away-place is called Khash in South-East Iran. At 7.8 magnitude "more than 30 people are reported dead".

I set aside my nightmares, pull back my chair and get to work again...

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LINKS:

• Blogpost - "Quake Notes" - 11 April 2011 -- url -- http://dinakarr.blogspot.in/search?q=quake
• BBC - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22168202
• Visvanathan, Shiv (2011): Tsunami's of the Mind, Tehelka, 9 April 2011 -- url --  http://tehelka.com/the-tsunamis-of-the-mind/: Interesting thoughts on "how a nation copes with disaster is a sign of its democracy’s health — and whether it can move beyond mere technofixes and plumbing stereotypes"

Gems from the Pali Canon

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I have always wondered...what is it that inspired Chiense scholars like Fa Xian (c.337-422 CE) and  Xuanzang (c. 602-664 CE)   to undertake that ardrous trek across the Tibetan plateau, and over the Himalayas to the monastic universities of Bihar? What was so great about getting an education at Nalanda?

 A part of the answer can be found in the Pali Canon, in documents like the Samannaphala Sutta. It gives you a glimpse of the great depth and power of ideas; of concepts communicated in a language acessible to kings and slaves alike; of prose that cuts though 'eternal questions' with startling simplicity.

The Chinese walked thousands of kilometers to understand the Pali Sutras. Some of these documents are now available online, in English translations that also reveal much about life & times of ancient Magadha.

Documents from accesstoinsight.org:

• Samaññaphala Sutta: The Fruits of the Contemplative Life (translated from Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu )

This Sutra describes Buddha's response to King Ajatashatru's question:
"Lord, there are these common craftsmen: elephant-trainers, horse-trainers, charioteers, archers, standard bearers, camp marshals, supply corps officers, high royal officers, commandos, military heroes, armor-clad warriors, leather-clad warriors, domestic slaves, confectioners, barbers, bath attendants, cooks, garland-makers, laundrymen, weavers, basket-makers, potters, calculators, accountants, and any other common craftsmen of a similar sort. They live off the fruits of their crafts, visible in the here and now. They give pleasure and refreshment to themselves, to their parents, wives, and children, to their friends and colleagues. They put in place an excellent presentation of offerings to priests and contemplatives, leading to heaven, resulting in happiness, conducive to a heavenly rebirth. Is it possible, lord, to point out a similar fruit of the contemplative life, visible in the here and now?"
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Nagas of Sanchi

Dr. Yoichi Yamagata has now published a new collection of his illustrations (Sketches from India, Vol.3). This time the focus is on "The Nagas of Sanchi".



I have been to Sanchi a few times but my visits had always been touristy in a shallow sort of way. I loved the sense of mystery, timelessness and serenity that surrounds the ancient Stupas and empty monastries; I remember watching trains snaking silently through the plains while resting under a tree, wondering about the rich ivory merchants from Vidisha who had 'sponsored' the intricately carved gateways, and about the thousands of monks who walked to nearby towns to beg for food.

It is only when you talk to people like Dr. Yamagata that you catch a glimpse of the big picture. For the past three years he has been spending many weekends exploring the area around the Great Stupa's. Until he told me about it, I did not know that river Betwa flowed just a mile away, or that this river was once an important tributary of the Ganga-Jamuna system, and a route for those who wanted to cut across peninsular India.

Apparently, the whole region was once dominated by the Naga's who are often depicted in a half-human, half-serpent form. Nagouri hill has life-size statue which is worshiped these days as "Nag-Baba" and down the river, you still have places like Tarachand Baba Rock whose original significance has been lost in the mists of time.

Wonder how many Indian historians have investigated the socio-economic significance of Sanchi at the turn of the previous millennium (200 BC-100AD)...