Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo: Second Edition

Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo: Second EditionTheravada Buddhism
Theravada Buddhism is widely recognised as the classic introduction to the branch of Buddhism found in Sri Lanka and parts of South East Asia. The Buddha preached in north-east India in the fifth-century bce. He claimed that human beings are responsible for their own salvation, and put forward a new ideal of the holy life, establishing a monastic Order to enable men and women to pursue that ideal. For most of its history the fortunes of Theravada, the most conservative form of Buddhism, have been identified with those of that Order. Under the great Indian emperor, Asoka, himself a Buddhist, Theravada reached Sri Lanka in about 250 bce. There it became the religion of the Sinhala state, and from there it spread, much later, to Burma and Thailand.
Richard Gombrich, a leading authority on Theravada Buddhism, has updated his text and bibliography to take account of recent research, including his discovery of the date of the Buddha and recent social and political developments in Sri Lanka. He explores the legacy of the Buddha’s predecessors and the social and religious contexts in which Buddhism has developed and changed throughout history. Above all, he shows how it has always influenced and been influenced by its social surroundings in a way which continues to this day.
Richard F. Gombrich is Academic Director of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, and one of the most renowned Buddhist scholars in the world. From 1976 to 2004 he was Boden Professor of Sanskrit, University of Oxford. He has been President of the Pali Text Society and was awarded the Sri Lanka Ranjana decoration by the President of Sri Lanka in 1994 and the SC Chakraborty medal by the Asiatic Society of Calcutta the previous year. He has written extensively on Buddhism, including How Buddhism Began: the Conditioned Genesis of the
Early Teachings (Routledge 2005); and with Gananath Obeyesekere, Buddhism transformed: Religious change in Sri Lanka (1988).
The Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices
Series editors:
John Hinnells and the late Ninian Smart
This series provides pioneering and scholarly introductions to different religions in a readable form. It is concerned with the beliefs and prac- tices of religions in their social, cultural and historical setting. Authors come from a variety of backgrounds and approach the study of religious beliefs and practices from their different points of view. Some focus mainly on questions of history, teachings, customs and ritual practices. Others consider, within the context of a specific region, the interrelationships between religions; the interaction of religion and the arts; religion and social organisation; the involvement of religion in political affairs; and, for ancient cultures, the interpretation of archaeo- logical evidence. In this way the series brings out the multi-disciplinary nature of the study of religion. It is intended for students of religion, philosophy, social sciences and history, and for the interested lay person.
Other titles in the series include:
Hindus Their Religious Beliefs and Practices Julius Lipner
Mahayana Buddhism The Doctrinal Foundations Paul Williams
Muslims Their Religious Beliefs and Practices Andrew Rippin
Religions of Oceania Tony Swain and Garry Trompf
Zoroastrians Their Religious Beliefs and Practices Mary Boyce
Theravada Buddhism A social history from ancient Benares to modern Colombo
Second edition
First published in 1988 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
This edition published in 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 1988, 2006 Richard Gombrich
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Contents
Acknowledgments and recommendations for further reading ix Preface to the second edition xi
1 Introduction 1
A Introductory information 1 B A social history of Buddhism? 5
The limitations of Marxist and Weberian views of religion 11
Unintended consequences 15
The Sangha 18
Theravadin history: the uneven pace of change 22
Buddhist identity 23
A Vedic civilization 32 The Vedic tradition 32
The early Vedic period 35
Later Vedic society 38
Karma and escape from re-birth 46
B The social conditions of his day 49 To whom did the Buddha’s message appeal? 56
3 The Buddha’s Dhamma 61
The Dhamma in its context: answers to brahminism 67
Buddhism as religious individualism 73
An ethic for the socially mobile 80
The Buddha on kings and politics 83
4 The Sangha’s discipline 89
General principles of the vinaya 90 Dating and development of the rules 92
The middle way between discomfort and indulgence 95
The disbarring offences and enforcement of chastity 105
Hierarchies of age and sex 106
The formal organization of the Sangha 107
Sect formation: Theravada defined 111
Maintaining conformity 114
Relations between ordained and laity 115
5 The accommodation between Buddhism and society in ancient India 119
A Buddhist devotion 119 The Buddha as an object of faith and devotion 120
Pilgrimage 122
Relics 123
B Secular power: Asoka 128 Asoka’s inscriptions 129
Asoka in Buddhist tradition 132
The missions: interpreting the evidence 135
6 The Buddhist tradition in Sri Lanka 137
The Sinhalese Buddhist identity 138
Periodization of Sinhalese Buddhist history 139
Sources 140
Role of the village monk 146
The achievements of Mahinda’s mission 148
Establishing Buddhism in a new country 150
The Sangha’s duty to preserve the scriptures 151
The use of Pali: Buddhaghosa 153
Translation and popularization 155
The structure of the Sangha in Ceylon 157
vi Contents
Sangha and state in Anuradhapura 160
The Sangha as landlords 161
Decline . . . 165
7 Protestant Buddhism 171
The British missions 175
Early Buddhist reactions 179
The impact of the Theosophists 183
Anagarika Dharmapala 186
Religious pluralism 196
Recent economic and social developments 199
The cultural effect of the war 201
Hinduizing trends 203
Using Buddhism for this world 206
Developments in the Sangha 207
The challenge 209
Works cited 211 Abbreviations and primary sources 217 References 219 Index 227
Contents vii
Acknowledgments and recommendations for further reading
There are two great pleasures in working on Theravada Buddhism: the primary sources and the secondary sources. To praise the Pali Canon and its commentaries would be an impertinence. I hope it may not be thought impertinent, however, to say what admirable books modern scholars have written on the subject matter of this one. Very often I have found I could do no better than attempt to summarize the conclu- sions of my learned and lucid predecessors. I only hope that what is essentially a presentation of their work has not been too inept to encourage the reader to go back to their fuller accounts. Here are the works I particularly have in mind; in brackets after each are the numbers of the chapters which most heavily rely on them.
Walpola Rahula: What the Buddha taught (3) Walpola Rahula: History of Buddhism in Ceylon: The Anuradhapura
Period (6) Mohan Wijayaratna: Le moine bouddhiste selon les textes du Theravâda
(4) Michael Carrithers: The Forest Monks of Sri Lanka: An Anthropo-
logical and Historical Study (4) R.A.L.H. Gunawardana: Robe and Plough: Monasticism and Economic
Interest in Early Medieval Sri Lanka (6) Kitsiri Malalgoda: Buddhism in Sinhalese Society 1750–1900: A Study
of Religious Revival and Change (7) Heinz Bechert: Buddhismus, Staat und Gesellschaft in den Ländern des
Theravada Buddhismus (7) Gananath Obeyesekere: ‘Religious Symbolism and Political Change in
Ceylon’ (article) (7)
Naturally these works figure, with others, in the references (which con- stitute almost my only footnotes). But that does not convey my full debt
to them. This is especially true of What the Buddha taught and of Malalgoda’s book. The Ven. Dr Rahula has provided my basic under- standing of Buddhism, so adequate acknowledgment through such academic apparatus is impossible. The first half of chapter 7 owes so much to Malalgoda that to signal every point I have learnt from him would look absurd. Since all these authors are, happily, alive and well as I write, I hope they will forgive me for depending more heavily on their work than the footnotes can indicate.
I am also grateful to my friend and teacher Gananath Obeyesekere for letting me use in chapter 8 some of the fruits of our joint researches.
Though I cannot here list the many other scholars to whom I am indebted for their publications, I must mention, as a kind of patron saint of our studies, T.W. Rhys Davids, who not only founded the Pali Text Society (in 1881) but also wrote so sensibly and so elegantly about Buddhism.
For their help in the form of criticism and advice I am most grateful to Steven Collins, Lance Cousins, David Gellner, Mohan Wijayaratna and Paul Williams, colleagues whose work I confidently expect to over- take much of my own.
I would also like to thank the staff of the Instituut voor Oosterse Talen of Utrecht University for the hospitality of their superb library.
Richard Gombrich, Oxford, August 1985
x Acknowledgments and further reading
Preface to the second edition
It is just over twenty years since I wrote the above. In the interim I have learnt a great deal more about early Buddhism, mainly from my own pupils and a few close colleagues. Much of that, however, concerns our understanding of the Buddha’s teachings rather than social history.
I suppose the first major breakthrough was my own discovery of the Buddha’s date to within a few years. A footnote was accordingly added to reprints of the first edition of this book. But I had already written (on p. 32) that the Buddha ‘was probably Enlightened between 550 and 450, more likely later rather than earlier’. Since my discovery puts the Enlightenment at c. 445 bce, its effect on the book’s content is negligible.
I have learnt to see the Buddha’s ideas far more in the context of the Vedic tradition. For this I am particularly indebted to Prof. Joanna Jurewicz of the University of Warsaw. Her discovery of rebirth in the R. g Veda is also of the utmost importance for the early history of Indian religion, but as yet insufficiently known. The same goes for her interpretation of the Chain of Dependent Origination.
Almost all the changes I have made for this edition occur in the first three chapters and the last. It is only on points in the first three chapters that I have changed my mind. The last chapter needed to be brought up to date. The war between the government of Sri Lanka and Tamil insurgents (the ‘Tamil Tigers’) can be said to have begun in earnest in July 1983, not long before I finished writing this book. It is alas not yet definitively over: though there has been a truce, punctuated by assassin- ations and other violence, during the last four years, it now (January 2006) looks as if the war is about to flare up again, and I for one am pessimistic about how the issues can be resolved.
The greatest change that has occurred in the world in the last twenty years is basically technological: the vast improvement in communica- tions brought about by the internet. The result of globalization has
affected most areas of human life and culture. If this book were about Buddhism in general, a section on the effects of globalization would be obligatory; it could indeed build on the essay on Buddhism by Gananath Obeyesekere in Global Religions: an Introduction (Juergensmeyer (ed.), Oxford, 2003). On Buddhism in Sri Lanka, however, the effect of glob- alization seems to me so far to have been negligible. Indeed, one could even say the main effect has been by reaction. Probably as an effect of the civil war, Sinhalese Buddhism has in recent years become ever more inward-looking, and the chauvinistic and xenophobic strands of Sinhala culture have been strengthened. The one area in which globalization is having an interesting local effect is that of the ordination of women to re-establish the Order of Nuns, but even here things would surely move faster were it not for the defensive reaction of chauvinist opinion- makers.
Others, of course, have meanwhile published work on the topics dealt with in this book. Should I not refer to more of it? I think not. My book is intended for a wide audience, not primarily for the tiny band of academic specialists. Only the latter would be interested in polemics. So I consider it more appropriate to pass over in silence publications from which I do not feel I have gained. But I must make one partial exception.
My friends Greg Bailey and Ian Mabbett have published a long book, The Sociology of Early Buddhism (Cambridge, 2003), to ignore which might provoke misunderstanding. The authors cite ‘arguments claiming that Buddhism reflected the new values [of the rising urban state] . . . and other arguments claiming that Buddhism rejected them’ (p. 16) and find this deeply unsatisfactory. They seem to think that one cannot have things both ways. They have not noticed that having things both ways is precisely what religions excel at. It is to suggest an answer to their position that I have inserted on p. 14 a paragraph about the over-determination of religious change. I have published a short review of this book in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African
Studies, vol. 68 (3), 2005, pp. 478–79. Finally: I regret that I have not found room to use Gananath
Obeyesekere’s book, Imagining Karma (California, 2002), chapters 3 and 4 of which contain a wonderfully rich discussion of early Buddhist karma theory. He shows that while theories of rebirth have been found in most parts of the globe, it is first in India that we find this theory ethicized, so that the form in which one is reborn reflects the quality of one’s morality in the previous life. When one connects his argument to Professor Jurewicz’s discovery that the Indians believed in rebirth many centuries before the Buddha, one gains a wonderfully convincing
xii Preface to the second edition
picture of how Indian society and culture developed hand in hand. Like Obeyesekere, I consider the topic of karma to be of crucial importance, and had already given it several pages; to dilate on it further would however unbalance this otherwise concise book. So let me just add it to the list of writings I recommend for further reading.
Richard Gombrich Oxford, January 2006
Preface to the second edition xiii
1 Introduction
A. INTRODUCTORY INFORMATION
Buddhists consider that their religion has Three Jewels*: the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha. They begin any ritual or religious cere- mony by saying three times that they ‘take refuge’ in these Three Jewels, which are therefore also called the Three Refuges. Indeed, the taking of the Refuges is what defines a Buddhist.
When they take refuge in the Buddha, Buddhists are thinking first and foremost of Gotama Buddha. Buddha is a title, meaning ‘Enlight- ened’ or ‘Awakened’. Gotama was the family name of a man who was born on the Nepalese side of the modern Indian-Nepali border, early in the fifth century bce, and died at the age of 80. According to later tradition, his personal name was Siddhattha. At the age of 35 he attained Enlightenment by realizing the Truth, the Dhamma. Outsiders see him as the founder of Buddhism; for Buddhists the matter is slightly more complicated. As they see it, the Truth is eternal, but not always realized. Time has no beginning or end but goes through vast cycles. Every now and again there arises in the world a religious genius, a Buddha, who has the infinite wisdom to comprehend the Truth and the infinite compassion to preach it to the suffering world, so that others too may attain Enlightenment. Gotama is the most recent Teacher in the infinite series of Buddhas. He was human, not divine, and is no longer personally accessible to us.
(The last sentence would not be accepted by Mahayana Buddhists. In this book the terms Buddhism and Buddhist refer primarily to the Theravada tradition. Not everything said is correct for all Buddhist
* When English terms translate Buddhist technical terms we shall normally capitalize them.
traditions, e.g. those of Tibet and the Far East. About all Buddhists few valid generalizations are possible.)
Every Buddha realizes and preaches the Truth. But not all of them ensure that that Truth will long be available to men. By preaching a code of monastic discipline, Gotama Buddha founded an Order, a Sangha. This institution not only consists of those who have decided to devote their lives to striving for Enlightenment; it also preserves the memory of the Buddha’s Teaching. Thus, in a metaphor central to Buddhism, the Buddha is the great physician, the Dhamma is the remedy he prescribes, the Sangha is the nurse who administers that remedy.
The word Dhamma is variously translated into English. In so far as it is what the Buddhas teach, the intellectual content of Buddhism, it is aptly translated ‘Doctrine’. This doctrine both describes and prescribes, so it is both ‘Truth’ and ‘Law’.
When a modern Buddhist takes refuge in the Sangha he is thinking primarily of monks. In Theravada Buddhist countries – Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand are the main ones – most villages contain monas- teries housing at least one monk, a man with shaven head wearing yellow robes. However, the term Sangha is ambiguous. In early texts it was used to refer to all who had accepted certain fundamental Buddhist doctrines and signalled their acceptance by taking the Three Refuges. Another traditional reference is to all who have attained a certain degree of sanctity, so that they will be Enlightened within seven lifetimes at the most; they are technically called Stream Enterers. Pro- bably this latter meaning, the ‘ideal Sangha’, and the first meaning ori- ginally referred to exactly the same people, the community of professed Buddhists. However, the commoner use of the term is, and has long been, to refer to the ‘conventional Sangha’, namely those ordained. Unless otherwise stated, that will be the use of ‘Sangha’ in this book. For some 1500 years the Order contained monks, nuns and novices, both male and female. But early in the present millennium the female ordination tradition was lost. In Theravada countries today there are some women who lead cloistered lives and behave like nuns, but whether any of them can strictly be considered members of the Sangha is a hotly contested issue (see below, pp. 16–17).
If Theravada Buddhists want to refer to Buddhism not just as a doctrine but as a phenomenon in history, a whole religion, they usually call it the Sasana, the Teaching. For example, where English speakers might talk of the welfare of Buddhism, they would talk of the welfare of the Sasana. Gotama Buddha founded the present…