Influence of early Indian history on Buddhism here
Sri Lanka received the Buddhist Doctrine in 236 BC on a Poson full moon Poya day. Sent by the Emperor Asoka, the event changed the course of Lankan history. But can the arrival of Buddhism in Sri Lanka be treated as an isolated event? Did historical developments that took place in early India, impact on the Buddhist Doctrine which we received?
Emperor Asoka embraced Buddhism 218 years following the Parinirvana of the Buddha by which time diverse views had crept in distorting the Doctrine. The Emperor, who desired to revive the Dhamma conducted a mammoth Dharmasangayanawa (Buddhist Council) in 250 BC with Moggali Puttha Tissa Maha Thero heading it. Following the conclusions of the Council, the Emperor implemented the recommendations which included expelling of a large number of Sangha responsible for the corruption of the Doctrine.
His most laudable task however was the sending of Dharmadutha missions to nine states outside the Maurya Empire for the propagation of the Dhamma – a groundbreaking decision taken at a convention even by present standards. Buddhism continues to spread and flourish in many countries, ironically outside the country of its birth,resulting in the Doctrine,over two million years later, to be recognized as a world religion.
The nine states selected by the Buddhist Council to carry out the ambitious dharmadutha missions, withstanding language and cultural hurdles, included Burma, Siam and Lanka in the East. In the West, the message was taken by learned Bhikkhus to Syria, Egypt, Macedonia, Cyrene, Epirus and Central Asia. These countries at the time, may have been the most vibrant on the world map for scholarly delegations to be sent on such arduous missions.
Of all these states, Sri Lanka surely had been the closest to Emperor Asoka’s heart for him to have kept close observations of Sri Lanka for nine long years before he sent his closest kith and kin as missionaries.
What was the historical, social and cultural background of early India that had a bearing on Buddhist Teachings thus arrived in Sri Lanka? In “Discovery of India” – the illuminating book on Indian history which Indian Premier Jawaharlal Nehru wrote while he was prisoner during the British Rule, he gives a dramatic description of the historical developments that took place which transformed Indian society. In his analysis he says that the formation of conditions that took shape as a result of the sociological transformations, led the Buddha as well as several other spiritual leaders to counter those that emerged as rigid and authoritative.
Nehru hails the Buddha as the greatest son of India and the Buddhist philosophy entirely a product of Indian thought and culture. Besides, the Buddhist Doctrine he says, formed very much part of the development of early Indian history.
Going back thousands of years he says that Aryans who poured into India in successive waves were absorbed which resulted in a cultural synthesis and fusion between them and the indigenous Dravidians representing the Indus civilization.Out of this grew the Indian races and the basic Indian culture.
These immigrants, identified as Aryans, included the Persians, the Greeks and the Parthians. Following their arrival in India, the oldest inclusive term for religion emerged as “Arya Dhamma” which meant “hold together” or the law of the inner being. “Arya Dhamma” included all the faiths that originated in India. The Buddha Himself called his way to salvation as the “Arya Path.”
The interaction between the migrants and the indigenous group resulted in a conflict through which arose the caste system (caste meant colour.) The system fitted into the growing specialization of functions and the Aryans who demonstrated their superiority, ended up as those of the higher castes. Brahmins as a result, became powerful and entrenched in priesthood intent on preserving its vested interests. Buddhism revolted against priestcraft and ritualism.
During the Buddha’s time, there had been a number of tribal republics and four principal kingdoms in Central and North India which included a part of Afghanistan. These states had strong autonomy and authority which were confined to the upper classes and we find in Buddhist literature, the Buddha expressing His views on “Dharmishta Rajya.”
Alexander’s brief raid into Northwestern India in the 4th century BC gave the push to develop the first powerful Maurya state bringing with it far reaching changes to India. Chandragupta, almost immediately after Alexander left India, built up the Maurya Empire around 325BC and thus commenced the first powerful and centralized Indian state which his grandson Asoka eventually inherited. The Mauryan reigns saw the amalgamation of petty states, small kingdoms and republics, scattered in the Northern part of India with stronger ones overpowering the weaker states. With the conversion of Emperor Asoka to Buddhsim who dedicated his energies to the propagation of Buddhism, the expansion of the Maurya Empire came to a halt.
The invasion of Alexander in the 4th century BC had a strong impact on the development of Buddhism. Even though Alexander returned to Greece, most of the Greeks who accompanied him to the East, stayed behind in India. Alexander’s General, Seleucus who was defeated by Chandragupta, set up his kingdom in Asia Minor. Chandragupta however, who married Seleucus’s daughter, maintained diplomatic relations with Seleucus and the Greek world in order to maintain trade links with the West.
The Greeks got pushed to Northwestern India after the military defeat. But amidst the political and economic revolutions changing the face of India, the Teachings of the Buddha had captured the imagination of the intellectual, particularly the Greeks who were reputed philosophers, craftsmen and artists and who had been converted to Buddhism. Thus, the Doctrine, which remained an intellectual philosophy propagating an austere lifestyle using only symbols such as the Buddha’s footprints, the lotus and the Dharmachakra to represent the Buddha, underwent a drastic change. The Greeks, being artistic and skilled craftsmen, let loose their aesthetic stirrings and for the first time there appeared images of the Buddha carved, sculptured and ornamented. This Graeco-Buddhist art spread in Gandhara – the region covering Afghanistan and the Northwestern frontiers of India where the Greeks had settled down. These Bactrians (Indo-Greeks) were spreading art from Kabul to the Punjab.
Even within India, Greek art on Asoka Columns gives evidence of the appreciation of Graeco aesthetic developments by no less a person than Emperor Asoka himself. The designs of some of the clustered columns Nehru says, resemble that of Persepolis of Persia and the granite columns known as Heliodorus at Besnagar near Sanchi, bear the inscriptions in Sanskrit which demonstrates the Indianization of the Greeks.
Nehru quotes Professor Tarn who says that the Greeks have not been pleasure-seekers. Neither had they been ascetics. They had not avoided pleasure as something evil or immoral. The eighteen clans of artistes and craftsmen sent to Sri Lanka by Emperor Asoka along with Sanghamitta Theri may have surely been influenced by this vigorous school of sculpture and painting. Therefore,the artistic traditions we received from the Maurya Empire may have been a fusion of Graeco-Indian art some of which may have got mixed with indigenous artistic traditions in Sri Lanka
Can we therefore surmise that the political, social and cultural transformations that took place in India since early history have had a bearing on Sri Lanka through the arrival of Buddhism?
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