by Sun Shuyun
This would be something akin to the Xuanzang Hall at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. I was quite moved. It was a symbol of India’s appreciation of Xuanzang, which I had felt so strongly since I arrived in the country. I had only to mention his name and doors opened, and the Indians talked about him as if he were a national hero. And this was not a recent phenomenon either; a Japanese monk visiting India in the ninth century recorded that in a large number of Buddhist temples, Xuanzang was painted as a demi-god on the walls, mounted on multi-coloured clouds with his hemp shoes and chopsticks, and on every fast day the monks bowed to his image in respect. Xuanzang wanted the Chinese to know about the holy land which he revered, and his Record has done more than that: it has recovered a large part of India’s past that would otherwise have remained lost. The Indians are grateful to him for that. Xuanzang could never have dreamed, either, that he would have been responsible for resurrecting the historical Buddha in the land of his birth and identifying the most important places in his life. And here, all would be remembered.
Something else was brought home to me here: that there was a lot of admiration for China in India, and Xuanzang was only a part of that. The two ancient civilizations have given each other so much over the centuries. Perhaps we have received more than we have given; as I have learned, Buddhism in particular has fundamentally changed Chinese society, from our rituals of birth and death, the gods the Chinese pray to, the novels we read, the pagodas we admire, the music we hear and the musical instruments we play, the paintings we look at and the language and concepts we use. The effects are everywhere. We cannot open our mouths without using words and concepts from Buddhism. It is no surprise that words like Buddha, Bodhisattva, monk, monastery, pagoda, nirvana and reincarnation came into our language this way. But I never suspected we borrowed from Buddhism concepts such as heaven and hell, gods and ghosts, fate and faith, principle and truth, reality and equality. Nor did I know that our novels really started as stories from the sutras recited by monks in public places to attract followers. The Confucian literature was dry and practical, full of instructions about morality and conduct: it was incapable of producing something as fanciful as The Monkey King. The Chinese word for ‘novel’ is still ‘little talk’, an earlier Confucian expression of contempt meant to discredit the realm of imagination and so-called triviality. But our mind was freed by the vast pantheon of gods, goddesses, devils and spirits in Mahayana Buddhism and the mythical worlds where anything was possible. Ever since our lives have been enormously enriched by a huge outpouring of novels, one of the glories of our culture – we cannot imagine being without them, but nor do we remember where they came from. This hall would testify to this wonderful exchange from a time when both were enjoying their finest flourishing. Perhaps in this place where Xuanzang had completed his studies one could dream of a future when it will happen again.
Xuanzang had not just learned about Buddhism on his epic journey; he had put it into practice, overcoming the dangers along the way. He had at last mastered the knowledge he had hoped to acquire, and was living by it. His mind was now clear of doubt. A verse from a Buddhist scripture ends with a metaphor that stands for this clarity:
Self-nature, complete and clear,
Like the moon in the water.
The mind in meditation, like the sky,
Ten thousand miles without a cloud.
EIGHT
Not a Man?
XUANZANG HAD one of his rare lyrical moments when he saw the Nairanjana River, now the Phalgu, in central Bihar, ‘with its pure waters, its noble flights of steps, the beauty of its trees and groves, and the pasture-lands and villages which surround it on all sides’. His emotion reveals itself in every line in which he described to us the road between Patna and Bodh Gaya, the very heart of Buddhism, the sacred spot where the Buddha achieved enlightenment.
Travelling on the same route I felt myself that the scenery could almost be what Xuanzang saw. There were very few modern intrusions save the occasional string of telephone poles. By the roadside, mango groves stretched deep into the interior, a mass of gnarly boughs and dark leaves with sunlight glinting through them. Women in bright saris, carrying their babies, led strings of goats through the trees; bullock-carts driven by old men creaked gently by on the edge of the narrow tar road. A man in a white dhoti walked slowly in the shadow of his elephant carrying a small mountain of wood. I had not seen nature and life in such beauty anywhere on this trip; it was like a dream of another world, as if intact from ancient times. The Phalgu stretched as far as I could see. It was the dry season, but the river was in flow, peacefully reflecting the blue sky and white roaming clouds. Some boys were having a serious cricket match on the wide stretch of land near the bank, while small children enjoyed themselves in the muddy puddles. Their homes, small hamlets in the distance, were nestled against a range of low forested hills.
This was the serene landscape where the Buddha decided he would pursue the final struggle for his enlightenment. He had left his luxurious life in the royal palace at Kapilavastu in the foothills of the Himalayas at the age of twenty-nine. His goal was nothing less than to find a way to end human suffering. He had sat at the feet of holy men and yoga masters in the forests of the Gangetic plain, penetrating the mysteries of discovering the True Self. This True Self had nothing to do with our mundane thoughts, our lusts and hatreds. It was eternal and free; we had only to find it, buried somewhere deep in the recesses of our consciousness. The Buddha was told that yoga would train his mind to focus so completely that he would enter into a kind of trance, pure, empty and infinite: he would feel he was in the realms inhabited by the gods. There he would find the True Self, unperturbed by anything. He achieved it – but it was not what he was looking for; once he was out of the trance he still felt envy, greed and passion. Man could not live in a trance all his life.
He abandoned yoga and turned to extreme austerities, which many believed would lead to the suppression of passion and then to liberation. For six years he wandered about almost naked, slept rough in the open in the cold of winter, and took no food for days or drank his own urine. His hair fell out, his eyes grew blurred and sunken, his skin turned black and peeled away, his body shrivelled until he looked more a skeleton than a man. Yet all was in vain. In fact, starvation made him more aware of himself and of his cravings. The bitter realization that he might die without achieving anything forced itself upon him. Was enlightenment an illusion? He might have wondered. But he was not going to give up. He left the cave in the forest, accepted a bowl of porridge from a milkmaid, washed off the filth of six years in the Nairanjana River, and put on an old shawl given to him by a funeral party. Then he headed for a pleasant grove on the riverbank, sat down under a pipal tree, and vowed that he would not leave the spot until he attained supreme knowledge.
The road to Bodh Gaya, wide and smooth, and shaded by tall, leafy ashok trees, was unlike the ones we had been battling on so far. Yogendra was all smiles. ‘Best road in Bihar. Japanese built it for Buddha.’ ‘Buddha Land’, ‘Pilgrims’ Inn’, and numerous other guesthouses and hotels stood neatly by the roadside. Frequently a spire or a golden roof in the distance indicated the position of one of a dozen monasteries – Sri Lankan, Thai, Burmese, Bhutanese, Nepalese, Tibetan, Japanese, Chinese – just about every culture with a strong Buddhist tradition was represented. Xuanzang would have found this very familiar; it was in one such monastery that he lodged for seven days when he was in Bodh Gaya.
I checked in at a small hotel on the outskirts of Bodh Gaya that had been recommended by the travel agency for its cleanliness and efficiency. Rajiv, the young man at the desk, was bright, courteous and helpful. Within five minutes I was in my room on the second floor, spacious, clean and cool. When I opened the window, the sun was shining brightly on a landscape of flowers, vegetables, grazing cows and an expanse of empty fields behind the hotel. In the distance, the mist was receding, revealing a calm and peaceful countryside. This was more like the Bihar I had imagine
d from reading Xuanzang.
I decided to have an early lunch and then go and spend the rest of the day under the Bodhi Tree. While I was waiting, Rajiv took me outside and pointed to the empty land I had seen from my room. ‘You must come back again in five years’ time,’ he said emphatically, ‘we are going to have the biggest statue of the Maitreya Buddha in the world in our back yard. It will be over three hundred feet high.’ Was the land all his? I asked. ‘No, no.’ He gestured. ‘The Brahmin families in our village got together and sold forty acres of land to some Buddhists who wanted to build this extraordinary thing. It is going to be in the Guinness Book of Records. People will come from all over the world and my hotel will have the best view. This is going to be a goldmine for us. Can you imagine?’ He could not conceal his excitement; his eyes gleamed with the prospect of dollars pouring in like the monsoon rains. He should be grateful to the Buddha, I said.
‘Yes and no,’ he replied hesitantly. ‘The Buddha’s teaching is not good for our community really. Things used to be fine. The tenants did what they were told. Then they were fed ideas about equality and rights and all those polluting things. Now they don’t want to listen. They follow some crazy people who tell them to convert to Buddhism, demand high wages, grab power from us and get rid of caste. They even threaten our lives. Still the government gives them privileges all the time,’ he grumbled.
‘So what do the Brahmins do?’ I asked him.
‘We have no choice but to organize our own private armies, what we call the senas. The government does nothing for us. We have to protect ourselves. We cannot let them ruin our life,’ he said firmly.
‘I have heard the police side with the upper castes,’ I said. ‘That is not true. They have far too much on their plate anyway,’ he replied.
‘So what do the senas do?’
He shrugged. ‘Just tit for tat.’
The waiter, a timid young boy, brought my drink of fresh lime soda on a tray, and then stood aside in the corner quietly, waiting for more orders. ‘How could he say we are all the same?’ Rajiv said slowly, his eyes on the boy. ‘There are always high and low in any society. That is why we have castes. How can I be the same as my servants?’
‘You think he should be your servant?’ I asked, my voice lowered, in case the boy heard.
‘Absolutely,’ Rajiv replied. ‘He is born a low caste. Nothing is going to change that. It is his fate.’ What caste was I? ‘Oh, you are of high caste. You are my guest. As they say in the West, customers are god,’ he said without a trace of irony.
But as a Brahmin, was he really supposed to run a hotel, an occupation traditionally reserved for the Banyas, the trading caste, the ones the Brahmins used to call ‘thieves that are not called by the name of thief’? I thought better of asking him. He was brought up to believe he was superior to everyone else. According to Manusmriti, the sacred Law Book of the Hindus, the Brahmins were the first-born, springing from the mouth of the supreme creator, and therefore they were by right the lords of the whole world, entitled to whatever exists in the universe; even when they killed people, they could not be punished by the king, and their conscience was cleared simply by their reciting three times some passages from the Veda, another sacred Hindu book. Of course the Brahmins actually wrote all the sacred books, as they were the sole custodians of knowledge, and the mediators between gods and men. What if Rajiv came a peg or two down the order? His servants must stay where they were.
When I was about to set off, Rajiv told me that I should return to the hotel before dark. ‘Only a week ago, a woman pilgrim was dragged out of her rickshaw, badly beaten up, and all her things taken.’ As if this was not enough, he said two masked gunmen broke into the Burmese Monastery three days ago, locked up the abbot at gunpoint, shot a monk in the leg and got away with all their savings and donations. ‘It is all these poor, good-for-nothing people. They beg by day and rob by night. They are such scoundrels.’
I felt uncomfortable listening to more of his justifications, but I was not in a mood to argue, and was glad to head into town. The street was busy; shops on either side sold incense, candles, rosaries, prayer books, Buddha statues in all sizes, samosas, soft drinks, tea and Indian sweets. Painted signs advertised long-distance phone rates; young men grabbed my arm, and informed me I could call Japan. Women seated on the ground tugged at my trousers offering flowers and garlands for sale. Beggar children put their hands on their mouths, asking for change. As I picked my way through the throng I feared the worst – another holy place spoiled by the tourist industry. I turned the corner, past a small Hindu temple on the left, bought my ticket at the grille, took off my shoes and walked through the gate. Suddenly all was calm. I walked along a cool marble path lined with low shrubs and there at the end was the Mahabodhi Temple, tall, majestic, with its pyramidal tower soaring into the sky, crowned with a symbolic stupa at the top and four small shrines at its base. Unlike a Hindu temple with its sensuous figures, it is decorated only with chaste niches in which Buddhas once sat. Apart from the vanished golden statues which had struck Xuanzang as particularly beautiful, and the burnt lime colour in which he said the temple was painted, very little seemed to have changed from what he described.
But then very little is what it seems. A drawing of the Mahabodhi Temple in 1799, made by a British officer working for the East India Company, showed a lonely structure covered from top to bottom with weeds, its remaining statues in the niches strangled by plants, its roof fallen in and its walls cracking. Camels and horses grazed the grounds and a few pilgrims were depicted filtering out of the bare entrance. They were there to worship Lord Vishnu, the Preserver of the Universe, whose feet were carved on a stone in front of the temple. The other object of their devotion was the celebrated Brahma Pipal, which they believed was planted by Brahma, the Lord of Creation. At each spot, the pious Hindu pilgrims performed their devotions, offering flowers, oil, sweets and money. The caption to the drawing says it all: ‘East view of the Hindu Temple at Bode Gya’.
In the winter of 1811, another employee of the East India Company, Dr Buchanan – a surgeon, a keen botanist, an amateur antiquarian and a jack of all trades – came to Bodh Gaya, charged by the Governor-General of Bengal to do a detailed survey of the area. He had already sensed from his travels in Burma and Nepal that the Buddha might be a real historical figure, who was born somewhere in northern India in the fifth century BC and had spent many years of his life teaching in Bihar. From the mohant, the leader of the Hindu ascetics who lived at the temple, he learned that two Burmese had recently come here, sent by their king. They said this was a holy place for them – the Buddha had lived here and it was under the same pipal tree the Hindus worshipped as Brahma’s tree that the Buddha sat and meditated. But the mohant could not tell him why the Burmese looked on this place as the centre of their world.
The first excavation that Alexander Cunningham undertook after his appointment as Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India was, appropriately enough, in Bodh Gaya. He found Xuanzang’s detailed description of the place an immense help. ‘He described minutely all the temples and statues which surrounded the celebrated Pipal Tree,’ wrote Cunningham in his first report. ‘Several of the objects enumerated by the Chinese pilgrim I have been able to identify from their exact correspondence with his description.’ The identity of Bodh Gaya was confirmed beyond all doubt as the place where the Buddha became enlightened under the Bodhi Tree. Later Cunningham returned to restore the dilapidated temple originally built by Asoka to its former glory – the Mahabodhi Temple we see today. He painstakingly followed Xuanzang’s description of its overall shape, the materials used and its decoration. In his final report on his work, Cunningham made this very clear. Once again, in this most sacred of all Buddhist shrines, everything, down to the smallest detail of the reconstruction, owes its existence to Xuanzang’s Record. ‘This description of the Mahabodhi Temple, as it stood in 637 AD, tallied so closely with the Great Temple as it now stands, that, in my
opinion, there can be no reasonable doubt that it is, in spite of all its repairs and alterations, the same building which was described by the Chinese pilgrim.’ Right behind the temple is the Bodhi Tree, enthroned on a square platform of stone. The tree, as Xuanzang tells us, ‘is the sacred point from which all else in Buddhist faith emanates’. As Buddhism rose and fell in India, the Bodhi Tree had many changes of fortune. It survived the attack, first of all, by King Asoka before he embraced Buddhism. And when he had his change of heart and began to propagate the Dharma in earnest, he sent a cutting of the Bodhi Tree with his son and daughter to Sri Lanka. ‘Afterwards it was cut down several times by evil kings,’ Xuanzang records. ‘At present, it is only fifty feet high. The trunk of the tree is of a yellowish-white colour and the branches and leaves are green and will not wither even in the autumn and winter season.’ The guidebook says the current tree was grown in turn from a cutting of the Bodhi Tree in Sri Lanka.
There was a flurry of activities going on under the tree. A big congregation of more than thirty Singapore pilgrims was holding an elaborate prayer service. They had set up an altar ten metres away, draped with yellow silk and piled with flowers, fruit and candles. Wearing the brown robe for lay devotees, and pale blue scarves around their necks embroidered with the name of their group, they sat four to a row, each on a comfortable grey cushion. They chanted joyfully and fast, turning the prayer books on their music stands at breakneck speed, only occasionally looking up to see the sacred tree, or the two video cameras recording them. Closer to the Bodhi Tree a group of Japanese was bowing silently in single file – two of them took out a long banner from a rucksack, holding it proudly over their heads for a group photograph. Then they left quickly to catch their coach. There was no emotion on their faces, no noise of excitement, no exchange of glances of understanding, just a series of gestures. Tibetan monks were doing what they always do: prostrating themselves thousands of times a day; their foreheads were covered with sweat and the cotton gloves they used to push themselves full-length on the ground were worn bare. A young Sri Lankan monk was tying a string of prayer flags to the railing next to the Bodhi Tree. In front of him was a young man with blond curly hair, sitting with his legs crossed, deep in meditation and oblivious of the world around him. But most dramatic were the Burmese: eight young women were having their heads shaved for their ordination; their families watched attentively and then picked up the tresses of long, dark hair from the white marble floor. Occasionally, a gentle breeze came and the shiny, slender heart-shaped leaves of the Bodhi Tree shimmered; a few dropped to the ground and were scooped up by the pilgrims to take home as precious keepsakes.
