Book
Reviews
Edward Conze. A Short History of Buddhism (Oxford: Oneworld, 1980. Reprinted 1996). Pp. 154. Price. US $ 13.95.
Edward Conze is one of those rare individuals
who spend their whole lifetime mastering some very remote and difficult field
of knowledge. He is the author of six books on Buddhism, including (with I.B.
Horner and D. Snelgrove) the classic Buddhist
Texts Through the Ages (1954). In this brief introduction he attempts to
covers the progress of the Buddhist religion in the last 2,500 years or so. As
this religion is spread out so widely in the world — India, Tibet, China,
Korea, Japan, Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand and other parts of East Asia — it is
far from easy even to give the briefest outline of it, but this, indeed, is
what the author has achieved in less than 150 pages.
Gautama,
who is now called “The Buddha” (the Englightened one), was born in the Sakaya
tribe somewhere in Bihar in India between 600 to 400 BC. So little is certain about him
that the exact date of his birth is unknown as are the details of what he
taught. Conze, however, has given his essential doctrine that violence in all
its forms should be avoided. Buddha also taught that the “self” is responsible
for all pain and suffering and one can get rid of it in the end by the state of
self-extinction or “nirvana”
as it is called. The Buddha also taught that death, as we understand it, can be
overcome. He attributes it to an evil force called Mara which operates
into us through cravings and attachments. If we overcome attachments we will
become immortal.
Conze
divides Buddhism into major phases with many variations and sub-sects which, of
course, abound in all religions. According to him the first phase, or Old
Buddhism, came to be known as Hinayana. The second is called Mahayana, while
the third is characterized by the rise of Tantra and Ch’an. These phases bring
us upto 1000 CE
after which Buddhism started disappearing from India but persisted in other
countries though sometimes in a much changed from that of Old Buddhism. This,
indeed, may be called the further phase of this ancient faith.
It
is not easy to define Buddhism without falling into either essentialism or
historicism. The former method consists of looking for family resemblances as
Ludwig Wittgenstein sought in games. The latter consists of recounting the
history of the sects without seeking to find exactly what they share in an
essential sense with each other. Conze has actually used both methods but, such
are the divergences between the sects, that he has had to rely predominantly on
the historical method. He does point out, however, that the monastic
organization, a set of meditations and the aspiration to the extinction of
self, are the elements providing a kind of family resemblance to the different kinds
of Buddhism existing in the world.
Conze’s
chapter on the first five hundred years is a good introduction to the ideas
which provided guidelines for the family resemblances persisting in Buddhism.
This, indeed, is the period in which the earliest Buddhist orders were
established, monastic rules and practices were laid down and the scriptures
came to be written. The Buddha came to be revered and the belief that he had a
miraculous body, invisible to all except the ones who were strong in faith,
gained ground.
As
in all ideologies, whether religious or secular, dissent came to split the
original idea. The Buddhists too split up in sects and the sects kept
multiplaying. It goes to the credit of Buddhism, however, that the monks
generally desisted from having their opponents branded as heretics and having
them killed. In some cases some sects and individuals were branded as heretics
but even they were not burnt on the stake as witnessed in some European
countries.
Although
Buddhism, at least in the beginning, emphasized otherworldliness (mainly by
emphasizing the concept of non-attachment to worldly things,) it spread when a
powerful emperor Asoka (274-236 BC), started patronising it. He sent missions to the successors
of Alexandar in the North West and to Sri Lanka in the South. In Sri Lanka
Buddhism has flourished since 240 BC — by no means a bad record! Again, contrary to the spirit of
Buddhism, the monks supported the wars of kings in Sri Lanka and gathered
wealth in their monasteries in many countries. This link between power and
ideology, whether secular or religious, can be witnessed all over the world and
in all phases of history. If power is shunned, the creed dies. If it is not
shunned, the creed makes major accommodations to its exigencies and demands
which change its nature. This, indeed, is what happened to the practice of
Islamic mysticism in the Muslim world. State patronage made the sufis rich and
worldly; the lack of it made them weak and wither away (see Riaz ul Islam, Sufism in South Asia [Karachi: Oxford
University Press, 2002]).
There
are different accounts of the split between the Hinayana and Mahayana doctrines
of Buddhism. Some scholars say that it occurred in 390 BC. However, according
to Conze the split occurred in the
second period. It developed first in North West and South India but spread to
Nepal, Tibet, Mongolia, China, Korea and Japan. The new doctrine emphasized
compassion and taught that a Bodhisattwa, rather than an arahat, is the ideal. The compassionate Bodhisattwa
perfects himself till he becomes a Buddha. Gandhara, the area around the
Pakistani town of Taxila, became a centre of Buddhism from where monks spread
out to China and Central Asia.
In
China Buddhism adopted Taoist and other local ideas whereas in India Tantric
ideas —ideas based upon magic and other psycho-physical powers — came to colour
Buddhism. The Tantrics believed that such methods gave one a direct and
conceivably shorter route to Buddhahood. Versions of this Tantric Buddhism
filtered into Burma. Indeed, while Buddhism got influenced by local ideas
everywhere, it did give a stamp of its own to these socieites. According to
Conze, in many societies it gave a characteristic politeness and kindliness
which might have been lacking without it. However, as stated elsewhere there
are many other variables, including dictatorship and military rule, because of
which certain Buddhist countries have been as violent as any other. The
exploits of Pol Pot are notorious and the excesses of the rulers of Myanmar
towards democrats and Muslim minorities are a case in point.
Buddhism
also led to reading, writing, architecture and sculptoring as is evidenced by
the number of cultural artifacts in Buddhist countries. In Korea, for instance,
magnificent statues and others monuments were erected between 550 and 664 CE
when it became the state religion. In Japan too it inspired art which survives
to this day.
Conze’s
chapter on the collapse of Buddhism in India is most interesting. He begins by
saying that the main cause of its disappearance was, “of course, the Mohammedan
invasions” (p. 107). In the course of his writing, however, it emerges that the
real cause was within Buddhism itself because, after all, Hinduism and even
Jainism did not disappear. In reality there had been so much assimilation
between Hinduism and Buddhism that “the separate existence of Buddhism no
longer served a useful purpose. Its disappearance thus was no loss to anyone”
(p. 109). It should, of course, be remembered that this assimilation was not a
grand conspiracy as some Muslim writers make it out to be but an inevitable
process given that both Hinduism and Buddhism have tremendous absorbing
capacity. In India, however, Hinduism was in such vast majority that it was
advantageously placed to absorb Buddhism.
The
last one thousand years have been encapsulated in so few pages covering so many
lands and developments that the crucial point of the impact of modernity on the
faith does not become clear. As for the future, although Buddhist societies
have sprung up in the West, it cannot be said whether Buddhism will survive,
and if so in what form, in the 21st century. Conze is optimistic and,
considering that all systems of beliefs do have a capacity to change and adjust
themselves, his optimism may be justified.
In
the end I must say that this very brief book, despite its inevitable tendency
to gloss over developments covering centuries, is the best introduction to
Buddhism one can find in the market.
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