Throughout this book I frequently contrast the actions of “the Buddhist laity” and “the Buddhist sangha.” I use these terms for the same reason I use the term “India”: because all of the other options are worse. The primary problem with these terms is that they imply far more coherence among “the laity” and “the sangha” than likely ever existed. Neither the Buddhist laity nor the sangha were ever homogenous. The sangha, as already noted, was divided into several different, often rival, sects, and Buddhist textual sources note several failed attempts at preventing sectarian schisms. Even within individual Buddhist sects there were marked status differences between members of the sangha, with abbots and those who had been ordained the longest having the highest status. These differences were even more pronounced in regard to gender. In some accounts, the Buddha was said to have only reluctantly accepted nuns into the sangha, and only after stipulating that even the most senior nun was subordinate to the most recently ordained monk.
If anything, the Buddhist laity were even more diverse than the sangha—with the same divisions in terms of status, wealth, and gender, but with additional divisions as subjects of rival kingdoms. The other problem with contrasting the actions of the Buddhist laity and the sangha is that neither were wholly separate from the other. Members of the laity, particularly older wealthier members of the laity, were often ordained late in life. Similarly, young people often became novitiates at Buddhist monasteries, gaining an education before returning to lay life. All told, the boundaries between the sangha and the laity were somewhat fluid. While it is difficult to talk about the history of Buddhism without discussing the sangha and the laity, it must always be remembered that neither group was completely coherent or completely distinct.
Similar to the division between the laity and the sangha, I also often speak of the differences between lay Buddhism and monastic Buddhism. Again, these terms likely obscure significant variation within, and similarities between, the forms of Buddhism practiced by the laity and the sangha. As used here, these terms are meant to draw on recent approaches to Indian religions that differentiate the popular religion of the laity from the more abstract and esoteric religion of the sangha (Fuller 1992; Lopez 1995). As stated by Lopez (1995:11),
Buddhism has a vast literature dealing with what we term logic, epistemology, and ontology—works that are (depending on one’s perspective) as profound or as impenetrable, as rich or as arid, as anything produced in the West. However, like philosophical works in other cultures, Buddhist treatises are the products of a tiny, highly educated elite (largely composed of monks in the Buddhist case) and rarely touch the ground where the vast majority of Buddhists lived their lives.
The standard history of Buddhism posits a gradual corruption of the more meditative and esoteric aspect of monastic Buddhism with the more vulgar practices of lay Buddhism. In subsequent chapters, I argue that something like the opposite occurred. Whether following the standard history or the revisionist history presented in this book, the arguments require an analytical division of the laity and the sangha, lay Buddhism and monastic Buddhism, if only to allow for the patterns of interaction between different Buddhists to be fruitfully examined.
Colonial and Postcolonial History
A massive body of literature focuses on colonialism and postcolonialism in India.1 With each year, these investigations become more nuanced and subtle, tracking the effects of colonialism and postcolonialism with increasing detail. Although my focus is not on the history of colonialism itself, it is important to examine the effects that colonialism has had on the study of Indian archaeology (Chakrabarti 1997, 2001; Lahiri 2005; Singh 2004; Thapar 2000). These effects color both the colonial and postcolonial sources that I rely on. For this reason it is necessary to approach historical sources with an understanding of the context in which they were created. Many of the historical themes I explore here are based upon one simple “fact”—Sanskrit is an Indo-European language related to Persian, Greek, Latin, and most other European languages. Further, the Rig Veda, the earliest readable text from India, is written in Sanskrit. For the British and other Europeans, this established that some ancient link existed between the European and Indian civilizations.
With the recognition of the common origin of Sanskrit and European languages by Sir William Jones near the end of the eighteenth century (Jones 1824), modern European narratives of Indian history began to emerge. Thomas Trautmann (1997) provides a nuanced investigation of these narratives, arguing that colonial history emerged as a synthesis of the work of European Sanskritists and the racial science of nineteenth-century anthropology. In this synthesis, the introduction of Indo-European languages was assumed to coincide with the migration of Indo-European people from Central Asia—the Aryans—into India during the second millennium bce. Colonial historians credited the Aryans with introducing “civilization” to India.2 They were considered a race superior to the indigenous South Asians, who were forced southward as the Aryans assumed control over northern India. For colonial historians, this served to explain the modern distribution of languages and races found in British India.
By the mid-nineteenth century, colonial historians discovered that the Dravidian and Munda language families of peninsular India were different from the Indo-European languages of North India (Caldwell 1856; Campbell 1816; Ellis 1816; see Trautmann 1997 for a review of the identification of the Dravidian language family). European historians postulated that the people who spoke these languages were the descendants of the people displaced by the Aryans. Thus, a linguistic divide between the North and South was explained as the product of the historical replacement and migration of different races. This racial explanation was buttressed by the observation that people in the South were dark skinned in comparison to the lighter skin of the descendents of the Aryans in the North. The one “fact” left to account for was the apparent sophistication of the Dravidian speakers of the South. This was explained by a process of “Aryanization” or “Sanskritization,” in which northern Aryans were postulated to have moved south to become the political and religious elite over the Dravidian speakers of the South (see Srinivas 1966, 1989). Just as the British employed local languages in their own colonial endeavor, the Aryans who moved south adopted the local languages of their new homes, slowly losing their original Aryan tongue. The presence of numerous Sanskrit loan words in Dravidian languages and common religious elements between the North and the South were seen as survivals of the process of Aryanization.
Over the course of two centuries of colonial scholarship, a simple story of Indian history was constructed. The origins of Indian civilization were viewed as the product of an earlier influx of colonizers, who were themselves the progenitors of the Europeans who now were in the process of re-colonizing India. Today it is almost impossible not to recognize that this historical narrative legitimized the colonial practices of the British in India (see Chakrabarti 1997, 2001; Lahiri 2000, 2005; Singh 2004; Trautmann and Sinopoli 2002; Trautmann 1997). Nevertheless, it should also be remembered that much of the colonial scholarship remains valuable to this day. That this scholarship existed within the context of British colonialism does not necessarily limit its usefulness in studying pre-colonial Indian history and archaeology.
If colonial histories of India emphasized the civilizing affects of foreigners, postcolonial histories of India emphasized the indigenous development of Indian traditions. Where colonial archaeologists saw social and technological advances in India as the result of successive waves of invaders bringing new ideas to India, postcolonial archaeologists were more likely to see these advances as homegrown. This does not mean that postcolonial historians rejected the claim that Sanskrit was an Indo-European language. Rather, postcolonial historians argued that Sanskrit was adopted by Indians rather than imposed by foreign invaders. More so, simply because Indians adopted Sanskrit, it does not mean that every other advance in India was a result of foreign innovation. Where British colonial archaeologists constantly looked outside India for the origin of cultural practices, architectural and artistic traditions, and systems of governance, postcolonial archaeologists emphasized the organic development of these practices and traditions within India.
Overall, I tend to follow a more postcolonial view of Indian history. While India was located at the center of trade routes that linked East Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Africa, the Near East, and the Mediterranean, India was not simply a container into which foreign ideas were poured. This is not to say that all developments in India were entirely independent. They weren’t. With trade contacts came new commodities and ideas that Indians adapted to their own use. India, particularly Northwest India, was repeatedly invaded and occupied by Central Asians. Indians benefited and borrowed from the foreigners they came into contact with, but foreigners also benefited and borrowed from Indians—with the spread of Buddhism across Asia, perhaps, the clearest example of the latter.
Anthropological Archaeology and South Asian Studies
There is one final disclaimer that must be addressed before proceeding. Archaeologists who study South Asia are divided between two overlapping camps. The first, and larger, camp are those who take a South Asian studies perspective. This perspective takes South Asia as the focus of research, with different scholars employing varied methods to further elucidate whatever subject they believe will add to the knowledge of South Asia. The second perspective, and a far rarer one, is anthropological archaeology. Unlike most of Europe and South Asia, where archaeology is considered a part the discipline of history, in the United States archaeology is a sub-discipline of anthropology. The placement of archaeology within anthropology in the United States is mostly due to a simple historical accident. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, archaeologists in the United States focused on the study of the ancient inhabitants of the New World as an extension of the ethnographic studies of living Native Americans. Where European and South Asian archaeologists studied their own history to understand where they came from, American archaeologists studied other people’s history to find out what makes people tick. These differences in the origin and academic affiliation continue to inform the practice of American archaeology to the present day. In the anthropological perspective, the goal of archaeological research is to explain how and why societies change in the broadest sense. The anthropological perspective relies on cross-cultural comparisons and the application of broader social theory to specific cases with the goal of explicating fundamental social processes. The South Asian studies perspective, in contrast, is more particularistic, focusing on specific archaeological sequences within South Asia. In general, archaeologists following a South Asian studies perspective distrust the application of broader social theories from one context to another. As a result, their research on South Asian archaeology tends to be empirically sound, but often has an atomistic and descriptive orientation.
I am, unapologetically, an anthropological archaeologist, and the anthropological perspective pervades my studies of Indian Buddhism. The goal of An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism is not only to describe the archaeological remains of Buddhism in India, but also to explain how and why Buddhism emerged, developed, and ultimately collapsed in mainland South Asia. This does not mean that I employ a social evolutionary perspective that ranks diverse and unrelated societies into abstract categories of complexity or sophistication. While the social evolutionary perspective was the hallmark of American anthropological archaeology between 1960 and 1980, both before and after this period social evolutionary thinking made up only a small, highly contested, portion of the discipline. While I freely borrow theoretical and methodological insights of social theorists from diverse disciplines and archaeologists working in places as varied as coastal Peru and the British Neolithic, my approach is not based on a foundation of social evolution. Rather, I simply recognize that other archaeologists often think up innovative and interesting ways to study things, and sometimes these innovative approaches can inform how I study Buddhism in India. All that said, I do not believe that my anthropological proclivities preclude the possibility of also providing a comprehensive survey of Buddhist archaeological remains. Throughout this book I present archaeological data in as straightforward and accessible manner as possible, and I analyze that material to illuminate larger social processes. I value, and employ, the insights of archaeologists and historians who take a South Asian studies perspective. There are benefits and weaknesses to both approaches, and while I may lean more toward anthropology, and others lean more toward South Asian studies, any serious South Asian archaeologist must blend the strengths of both.
World History
