Edward Conze, A Short History of Buddhism (Oxford: Oneworld, 1980. Reprinted 1996 edition), pp. 154. Price. US$ 13.95.
Eward 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 Budhism, including (with I.B. Horner and D. Snelgrove) the classic Buddhist Texts Through the Ages (1954). This brief introduction 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 B.C. So little is certain about him that the exact date of birth is unknown as are the details of what he taught. Conze, however, has given the essentials of his doctrines which are that he taught 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 religious.
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 C.E 1000 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 hostiricism. 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, invisble 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.
Although Buddhism, at least in the beginning, emphasized otherworldliness, it spread when a powerful emperor Asoka (274-236 B.C), 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 B.C---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 monasterics in many countries. This link between power and ideology, wheth 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 [OUP, 2002]).
In the second period Buddhism developed the Mahayana doctrine. 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.
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 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.
The last one thousand years have been eneapsulated 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.