Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud

by Sun Shuyun

  ‘We owe Xuanzang a lot. So much of our history would have been lost without him,’ Dr Agrawal said as we sat down in the courtyard café of the museum. ‘Open any book on early India, he is there. But more than anything else, he brought Buddhism back to life for us.’ Over the next two hours, he went on to tell me the most astonishing story of the rediscovery of Buddhism in India: an account I later filled out with my own reading.

  Dr Agrawal made me realize just how different the Indians and the Chinese were – and that was why Xuanzang was so important for India. ‘People tend to talk about the differences between East and West. But China and India seem to be humanity’s polar opposites.’ The Indians are philosophical, spiritual and transcendental, while the Chinese are practical, materialistic and down-to-earth. For the Chinese, the world we live in is all there is. Confucius told us that ‘to dedicate oneself seriously to the duties towards men, to honour spirits and gods but to stay away from them. That can be called wisdom.’ For Hindus, religion dominates life. Their ultimate goal is moksha – the final liberation from this mundane and ephemeral world into blissful eternity. And they have a staggering 330 million gods and goddesses to help them achieve it. So it must be puzzling to a Hindu that Confucius, who has guided the Chinese for two and a half thousand years, was merely an itinerant scholar with no divine aura.

  Another striking difference between the two peoples is in their attitudes to history. ‘You Chinese are the best record-keepers in the world, and Xuanzang was very much in the tradition,’ Agrawal told me. It is true that we take history very seriously. Keeping meticulous chronicles is an important and rewarding task and it serves a political, rather than intellectual, purpose. Since Confucius’s time, scholars have carefully recorded every year of our history in minute detail – the long or short reigns of every single emperor and their bizarre sexual habits, the periodic upheavals of peasant revolts, and the voluminous output of the poets and writers. All in the hope that the emperors and the Mandarins would avoid the mistakes and repeat the successes of the past. History is a mirror, reflecting yesterday and projecting tomorrow.

  Xuanzang was no exception. He was born into a scholarly family and he learned the Confucian classics and traditional values from his father at a very young age. Hui Li, his biographer, told a story to illustrate the point. One day Xuanzang’s father was reading aloud to him a passage from The Ode on Filial Piety. Suddenly the eight-year-old boy stood up. His father was surprised and asked him why. He replied that the wise in the old days stood while receiving instruction from their teachers. ‘Surely Xuanzang dares not sit at ease while listening to Father?’ Even after he became a Buddhist monk, he never forgot what his father had taught him, including a reverence for history, and the Chinese tradition of record-keeping.

  ‘For us Hindus, this life is only transitory,’ Dr Agrawal said, slowly sipping his Darjeeling tea. ‘So what is history and historical knowledge but a kind of unnecessary baggage? The Puranas, the Hindu sacred texts, have a few names of kings and royal families, but they are shrouded in divine and mythological clouds, not very useful clues for archaeologists. The Buddha was an Indian, and possibly the greatest man ever born here, but we had no historical record of him. When Xuanzang came here Buddhism was already in decline. In the eleventh century, the Afghan invaders dealt the final blow. Jungles swallowed all the thousands of Buddhist monuments, and mosques or Hindu temples were built on their foundations. The Buddha was all but forgotten in the land of his birth. But Xuanzang’s Record tells us everything.’

  The rediscovery of the Buddha began with a small group of British colonial officers who had fallen in love with India, in particular, Alexander Cunningham, the first Director General of the ASI. Back in 1834, Cunningham, a twenty-year-old lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, had recently arrived in India from Scotland and was stationed in Benares. Outside the city and across the Ganges was Sarnath, a quiet retreat from the crowded Hindu holy city. Here, among ancient trees and overgrown grasses, was an imposing 145-feet-high domed edifice with superbly crafted sculptural ornaments on its surface. What was it for? Why was it so beautifully made? Why was it here? Cunningham was curious. The general belief in Benares was that it held the ashes of the ‘consort of some former rajah or prince’. He asked several Brahmin priests, the acknowledged guardians of India’s ancient traditions. They were not helpful at all – they had even refused to teach the English sahibs their sacred language, Sanskrit. His repeated enquiries with them gained him no answers.

  He decided to do a little exploration. He received some financial help from the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, an organization whose only requirement for membership was ‘love of knowledge’. Being an engineer himself, Cunningham built scaffolding as high as the dome and sank a five-foot-diameter shaft from the top all the way down to the foundation. After fourteen months of labour and an expenditure of more than five hundred rupees, he found nothing but a stone with an inscription he could not read. In a nearby mound, he found sixty exquisite statues, although he had no idea what they were either. He was bitterly disappointed. He sent a copy of the inscription to the Asiatic Society and packed off twenty of the best-preserved statues to Calcutta. ‘The remaining statues, upwards of forty in number,’ he recorded in his diary, ‘together with most of the other carved stones that I had collected, and which I left lying on the ground, were afterwards carted away by the late Mr Davidson and thrown into the Barna river under the bridge to check the cutting away of the bed between the arches.’

  His colleagues in the Asiatic Society were not certain either. The inscriptions were deciphered as a standard confession of faith in the Buddha. By now they knew from their field officers in Burma, Thailand and Sri Lanka that the Buddha, despite his depiction with curly hair, straight nose and thick fleshy lips, was not ‘an African Negro’ from Ethiopia or Egypt, and Buddhism did not originate in Africa, as they had previously thought. Nor was he an incarnation of Vishnu as the Brahmin priests assured them. He was a real man born somewhere in northern India. The Buddhist scriptures in Sri Lanka even specified where the Buddha was born and died but they could not be identified with any place in India. They did, however, make clear that Bodh Gaya and Sarnath were the most important.

  Much else was made plain by the publication in English of the eyewitness accounts of two Chinese monks, Fa Xian’s Record of Buddhist Countries in the 1840s and Xuanzang’s Record of the Western Regions in the 1850s. Copies of both books had always existed in China and now they were ‘discovered’ by European orientalists, and were translated for the first time into French and then English. Between the two of them, they had mapped out the whole of Buddhist India, spanning over a thousand years, with all the main sites, their locations, their importance, their histories and the details of monasteries and the monks who inhabited them. When Cunningham wrote about the impact of their records, he expressed what many must have felt: ‘It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of these travels; before, all attempts to fathom the mysteries of Buddhist antiquities were but mere conjecture.’ The magnificent monument that he had explored in Sarnath was a stupa marking the sacred spot of the Buddha’s first sermon after his enlightenment.

  Reading these accounts was like a sudden flash of light for Cunningham. He immediately conceived an ambitious plan: to use the Chinese monks’ records as his guide and throw light on more than a thousand years of the history of Buddhist India. The idea filled him with exhilaration, but the British rulers of India wanted to hear nothing of the past of their inferior dependency. As Macaulay infamously declared: ‘It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information that has been collected to form all the books written in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgements used at preparatory schools in England.’ Surely such a culture was not worth exploring. So although Cunningham had devoted every minute he could spare from his military duties to studying the Chinese records and the material remains of ancient India,
he had to wait almost thirty years before the wind began to change. In 1861, now aged forty-seven and retired from the army with the rank of major-general, Cunningham finally landed the job he had been dreaming of: he would head the new Archaeological Survey of India, a grandiose name for him and his two assistants. He was ecstatic.

  Cunningham chose to follow Xuanzang’s footsteps. The Record was invaluable, with accurate information about directions, distances and major signposts, and even described the layout of all the major monuments. So with a modest caravan and his assistants, Cunningham took to the field. For the next twenty-five years, he retraced Xuanzang’s tracks up and down the country, inspecting and excavating all the major sites that the Chinese monks had described. In India Discovered, John Keay paints a vivid picture of how Cunningham pursued this mission in the autumn of his life:

  One can imagine the little caravan descending on some forgotten group of temples. The tents are up as the old General emerges, stooping, from a sculpture-encrusted porch. His tweeds reek with the sickly smell of bat dung; but a quick ‘tub’ and he is back to work, recording the day’s discoveries on a shaky camp table. As the sun dips behind the trees and the parakeets go screeching home to roost, the lamp is lit, and the General, issuing instructions for an early start in the morning, retires to bed with a dog-eared copy of Xuanzang.

  The darkness that shrouded Buddhist India receded with each of Cunningham’s excavations – Bodh Gaya in Bihar, where the Buddha became enlightened; Sravasti, where he spent most of his life teaching; Kushinagar, where he died; Rajgir, where the Buddha had his first royal patronage; Mathura, home to the Mathura school of sculpture that had created the first and some of the finest Buddhist images. Where he left off, others stepped in, also following Xuanzang’s account – Patna, the centre of Indian polity and the home to King Asoka, arguably the greatest king in Indian history and a patron of Buddhism, and finally Lumbini, now in Nepal, where the Buddha was born. Although Cunningham’s methods were, by modern archaeological standards, basic or even crude, he mapped out the India that Xuanzang saw, forgotten by Indians themselves. He brought Buddhism back to life. And he knew he owed it all to his two Chinese guides, and Xuanzang in particular: ‘It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of Xuanzang. He was the light in the darkness of mediaeval India.’

  It was getting late and the museum was closing. We stepped out into Delhi’s gentle winter-evening light; it came filtering through the big trees on Janpath, with the slight chill that marked the fading of the day’s sunshine. In this first of many conversations with Dr Agrawal I felt great empathy for him – Xuanzang brought us closer. His admiration for the Chinese monk was infectious. ‘We can never thank Xuanzang enough,’ he said to me, as we stood outside the museum. ‘Of all Chinese, past and present, he is the only one to have penetrated India, mind, body and soul. You can almost say he is one of us, except he is more than one of us – he brought with him another world, which greatly enriched us.’

  We said goodbye, and I walked slowly for a while down the wide avenue. I hardly noticed the cars and the people going by – my head was full of all the things I had learned. I had no idea Xuanzang was so important to India and that they still think so highly of him 1,300 years later, so much more than we do ourselves. They could not have hoped for a better ambassador for their civilization. There is no doubt the Chinese and the Indians are very different; but as Xuanzang had shown, and as Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet and Nobel Prize winner, told his Chinese audience in 1924: ‘Let what seems a barrier become a path, and let us unite, not in spite of our differences, but through them. For differences can never be wiped away, and life would be so much poorer without them. Let all human races keep their own personalities, and yet come together, not in a uniformity that is dead, but in a unity that is living.’

  I began to feel that everything was starting to fit together, and I was reaching a deeper appreciation of what my coming here could mean. I understood Xuanzang much better, and saw how he could be a bridge between the past and the present, and between China and India. I was ready to follow him in the land of the Buddha.

  The state of Bihar would be the most important stage of my Indian journey – it is where the Buddha became enlightened, where he spent most of his life teaching, and where he died. The word ‘Bihar’ actually comes from vihara, ‘Buddhist monastery’. Xuanzang devoted nine of his thirteen years in India to Bihar, where he sought the true meaning of the Buddha’s teachings and paid homage to the Enlightened One. I would go there as a kind of pilgrim to see Xuanzang’s inspiration made real for me.

  Prem, a Bihari himself, tried to dissuade me from going: ‘Bihar is no longer the holy land Xuanzang saw. You have no idea what it’s like today. Ask my servants – they all come from there. There’re no schools in the villages, no electricity, no roads. Men don’t have jobs, children starve, women are gang-raped. We Indians call it “the hole in the heart of India”. Do you know nearly fifty thousand people were murdered in Bihar in the last six years? Perhaps we should let China have it for a while and see what your people can do,’ he joked.

  ‘How did Bihar get into this state?’ I asked.

  ‘It is caste,’ Prem said. ‘Bihar played a very important role in our Independence movement. I guess the Brahmin landlords got the credit for it and they dominated Bihar politics and the Congress Party for a long time. But they never did anything for the lower castes, and eventually those people rose up and elected their own leaders. The new men might have done a lot of good for the confidence of their followers but they didn’t run the state properly. Slowly everything fell apart.’

  Was that not true of the rest of the country?

  ‘Bihar has the largest number of big landlords in the country. It also has the highest population of people without land in the country. You put the two together, you have a recipe for strife.’ He looked resigned.

  ‘Buddhist pilgrims still go there,’ I said.

  ‘They are very brave,’ he said. ‘But I wouldn’t advise it. There was a piece in the Indian Express last week. I will go and get it for you.’ He went to his study and when he returned showed me this: ‘A busload of Japanese pilgrims and Buddhist monks were robbed at gunpoint in Bihar. Most of their possessions were taken, and two people were badly injured. The government advises people to stay away from the area until a safer time.’

  ‘You must know about the state elections in Bihar too?’ Prem asked, handing me another paper, with the headline: ‘Two shot dead by police when trying to capture the election booth. Fourteen dead in clashes. Seven hundred people arrested on the first polling day.’ But I cheered myself up when my eyes caught this line: ‘An election supervisor locked himself up in his room and refused to attend to his duty because of the violence.’ He was a brave man.

  ‘And you still want to go?’ Prem stood there, holding the papers, looking at me askance.

  I had no choice.

  Late that morning I flew to Patna, Bihar’s capital and the gateway to the heart of the Buddha’s land. The airport was true to form. Built just a few years ago, the toilets in the arrival hall had never opened. When I approached them, an attendant said, ‘You must go and do it outside.’ I had arrived. I was glad that something was working: the driver arranged by Prem’s travel agency was waiting for me, a small, dark and very alert young man called Yogendra. There was only one slight problem: Yogendra spoke only a little English, and he was to take me on my Buddhist tour. I had so many questions, but he would not be the one to answer them.

  The drive from the airport into town was a shock. The roads filled up with traffic, buses and motor rickshaws coughing out black smoke, an occasional cow munching in the middle of the thoroughfare. They had built flyovers to ease the congestion, but they did not do much for the traffic – they were too narrow and some of them were already crumbling away. Instead they provided shelter for new settler colonies, more hovels for the huge numbers trying to scratch a living in the city. Mini-vans with loudspeakers,
election banners and jubilant supporters tried to blast their way through the solid traffic jam, but nobody was getting anywhere. While we were stationary, I noticed Yogendra checking the handles on his door and the back door several times.

  ‘Is Patna as dangerous as people say?’ I asked him.

  A long pause and then came his measured reply. ‘You want to know?’ He watched my reaction through the rear mirror. I nodded. ‘Things not good here. Even in daytime, with policeman watching, men hold guns to you at traffic lights, tell you get out, drive off in your car. It happens often. I see with my own eyes.’

  ‘What happens to the owner?’

  ‘If you know police and pay money, they get your car back. They are like this.’ He clasped his hands together.

  Xuanzang had troubles with thugs too. Patna is on the south bank of the Ganges, and it was on this famous river that he had one of his most dangerous encounters. He was crossing it in a ferry with hundreds of passengers when they were ambushed by ten boatloads of pirates. The passengers were so frightened, several jumped overboard and were drowned. All the rest were ordered to strip off their clothes on the bank. The pirates worshipped Durga, the river goddess, and they thought the handsome Chinese priest would make a pleasing sacrifice. Xuanzang pleaded with them: ‘I have come here from a long way off to pay my respects to the Bodhi Tree, and to acquire the sacred books and the Law of the Buddha. If this poor and defiled body of mine really is all right for your sacrifice, I will not grudge it to you. But I have not yet done what I came for, and if you kill me, it may do you more harm than good.’