by Sun Shuyun
Xuanzang headed for South India in 636, after five years of study in Nalanda. His goal was to visit Ceylon: the home of Theravada Buddhism and many of its greatest masters. On the eastern coast, he passed through Kalinga, modern Orissa: as Xuanzang would have known well, the scene of Asoka’s bloody victory which led to his shame and conversion to Buddhism. Xuanzang stayed at a seaport, a particularly lively place where ‘merchants depart for distant countries, and foreigners, coming and going, stop on their way.’ He was struck by the quantity of rare goods in the city, some of which would have come from as far away as Rome. For ships going out to southeast Asia, rice, indigo, brown sugar and textiles were the more common cargoes. He might have found lodging in one of the five monasteries outside the city, right on the sea, seeing the ships sailing off. He let his thoughts wander off with them, in the warm tropical night, to Ceylon. ‘Every night when the sky is clear and cloudless, a thousand kilometres to the south is Ceylon, where the precious diamond placed above the Stupa of the Buddha’s Tooth casts a dazzling light that can be seen from afar. The radiance resembles a torch hanging in mid-air.’ But he was advised by the monks not to take the sea route, which was very dangerous. He should travel overland to Kanchipuram in South India, and from there he could cross the sea to Ceylon in three days.
The journey to Kanchipuram took Xuanzang more than a year, as he frequently stopped to study with any great master he could find. I was there in one day on the Coromandel Express to Madras, and another two hours by bus. The road was crowded but the countryside still fitted his description: ‘The soil is fertile and finely cultivated, and produces abundance of grain. There are also many flowers and fruits.’ Through the window I could see lush paddy fields hemmed by palms and every now and then white-washed houses studded with a profusion of pink, red and yellow flowers. The bus entered town along a few ordinary shopping streets, except that above the shops loomed the gopurams, the towers, of its great temples. Xuanzang noted that the place was famous for ‘precious gems and other articles’. But today the main sale was silk, or Chinamshuka, the Sanskrit name as I fondly remembered. Kanchipuram silk was known throughout India and there was plenty of it here, in shop after shop and street after street, rolls of it, in every colour you can imagine: pale lime next to cerise, livid purple and gold, like jewels and baubles displayed row on row.
Xuanzang felt very much at home here and stayed for several months. Kanchipuram was the capital of the Dravida kingdom, which boasted over a hundred monasteries and 10,000 monks. The people were courageous, honest, truthful, and esteemed learning and learned men. But what drew Xuanzang even more to Kanchipuram was the memory of Dharmapala, who was born to a noble family here. He was Shilabhadra’s teacher. Xuanzang had studied at the feet of Shilabhadra for five years, received the most profound teaching, and finally understood Yogacara. The wisdom had come down from this man, to whom Yogacara and he owed a great debt. He was particularly influenced by Dharmapala’s commentaries on the Yogacara school of thought. On his return to China, he used them as the main source for The Doctrine of Mere Consciousness, his synthesis of the major arguments of Yogacara; the work became the key text of this school in China and Japan.
Today Kanchipuram is still a holy city, thronged with pilgrims – but they are Hindu pilgrims. In fact, Kanchipuram is one of the seven holiest cities in India, and its Shankaracharya is regarded by many Hindus as one of their five spiritual leaders. I walked from one temple to another, in a daze at the sheer number of them – over seventy – in this small place, each more grand and beautiful than the last. I was particularly keen to see the Kamakshi Temple and its mandapa, the square shrine in front of the Shiva sanctum. It is sacred to Shankara, the great reformer of Indian religion – local legend says he died here. For me this is a profoundly symbolic place. Xuanzang told us of the ascendance of heretic temples and believers in many towns and cities. He talked about evil kings who cut down the Bodhi Tree, killed monks and destroyed monasteries. But he did not know that the most fatal blow to Buddhism came from Shankara only a hundred years after he left India.
Shankara was born in Kerala in about 700 AD, and became an ascetic in his teens. Like every seeker of the truth he studied in Benares, rapidly showing his brilliance and acquiring a reputation as a philosopher. But knowledge, even personal salvation, was not his final goal. He was unhappy with the numerous sects, each claiming supremacy and creating discord. He felt the Brahmin priests were mainly intent on emphasizing their separateness and safeguarding their privileges, leaving out a large section of society. Something needed to be done to reclaim the ground, moral, doctrinal, ritualistic, as well as social, that had been lost to the Buddhists.
‘Who are you? Who am I? From where do I come? Enquire thus and you will realize that the entire world is but a dream, a mere hallucination, born of imagination. With such a realization, you will be freed from the delusions of the world,’ Shankara wrote. Brahman, the Absolute, is the only reality, which is manifested in Shiva, Vishnu, a Brahmin – it is everywhere and everything. Xuanzang would have found himself almost agreeing with this Hindu philosopher’s doctrine of Advaita, oneness or non-duality. Even the Absolute is close to the pure consciousness of Yogacara, except that it is eternal, not as in Buddhism, in a continuous state of flux. Through his commentaries on the classics, the Vedas and Upanishads, Shankara took on Buddhism on its own ground, arguing that all the elements that were the source of its broad appeal could be found in the Hindu holy books.
For fifteen years Shankara travelled all over India, teaching his new creed. He started in villages until he had a considerable following. Then he went into the cities where the Buddhists and Jains were strong. Here the battle for people’s minds began. He convinced and converted a great many people by inviting them to challenge him – if they lost, they would become his followers. Observing how important the Sangha was for Buddhists as a centre of learning, propagation and worship, he too set up monasteries which the Hindus call mathas. Today they are the holiest places for many Hindus: in the east, in the west, in the south and in the north, and here in Kanchipuram. The five head priests are called Shankaracharyas, Shankara the Teacher, and they are the leaders of the Hindu faith.
The mandapa shrine dedicated to Shankara in the Kamakshi Temple is not so ancient, perhaps three or four hundred years old, but as beautiful as anything I had seen. Its intricate sandstone carving had retained its delicacy and strength, and even the florid sculpture was not overwhelming. Simplicity and harmony permeated the stone and the space around it. A crowd of pilgrims were piling marigold wreaths, sweets, candles and small jars of water in front of it. As I watched, a priest appeared in a saffron robe and smiled absently at me. I asked him if he spoke English and he smiled again, this time with interest. ‘My first degree was in English, before I became a priest,’ he said. His voice was warm and deep – one of those instantly reassuring voices priests so often have. I asked him if Shankara really died here. ‘We think so, although he is also thought to have died in the north, in the Himalayas. But you can say he is everywhere.’ He pointed to the pilgrims. ‘That was his real contribution,’ he said. ‘He was not just a great philosopher – he would never have won so many converts with philosophy alone. He had a message for everyone, it was bhakti, it was devotion. The Absolute One is in everything and everybody. Celebrating it is celebrating the purest in all of us. As is said in the Upanishads: “It is his Self alone that a man should venerate as his world. From his very Self he will produce whatever he needs.” ’
I could see how liberating Shankara was. But surely the Brahmins were angry with him?
‘His Brahmin opponents called him “a Buddhist in disguise”. But he wanted to open the religion to everyone,’ the priest said. ‘The Brahmins are still spiritual teachers but they don’t have a monopoly any more. Everyone has hope. Shankara was the liberator.’
Shankara was indeed responsible for creating a unified Hindu religion, which reduced the appeal of Buddhism as a refuge from Br
ahmin dominance and caste prejudice, particularly in South India. Buddhism was deeply undermined and never recovered; and the physical destruction wrought by the Afghan invaders four hundred years later completed the process. In the whole of North India there was scarcely a statue that was not defaced by the invaders, scarcely a temple that was not ravaged, with all the monks either killed or fleeing to Nepal or Tibet. Muslim chronicles record that an order went out from the new ruler to find someone capable of reading the books in a monastery library, but no one was found alive. Hinduism survived because Hindu temples were not the be-all and end-all of the religion: Brahmins were the custodians of the sacred texts and knowledge; holy men, sages and sadhus wandered the country; people could perform pujas at home; in time new temples were built again, many on Buddhist sites. But for Buddhism, the Sangha was all-important and when the monks were gone, Buddhism in India was dead.
As I was about to leave the Kamakshi Temple, another group of pilgrims came up to Shankara’s shrine. This time they were saying a short prayer, perhaps one of the beautiful hymns Shankara wrote. When I read these hymns, I was struck by how Buddhist they sound: ‘We wallow in our ignorance as in mire. Our life on earth, snared in the cycle of birth, old age and death, is but vanity and sorrow. Glory be to those who see this bondage for what it is, cut the knot with the sword of knowledge, and stand firm in their wisdom.’ Perhaps Buddhism was not dead after all. It has lived on and its influence can be felt in all aspects of Indian life, reaching even into the deepest recesses of the Hindu mind. I remember I was puzzled when I read this bold claim in a study of Buddhist culture in India during the seventh and eighth centuries: ‘Every Hindu is a Buddhist, in spite of all outward appearances to the contrary.’ I began to realize what it meant.
It was sad, however, not to find any trace of that Buddhist past in this once great Buddhist city. I thought of Xuanzang’s disappointment here too. He was waiting for ships to sail for Ceylon, but none was leaving for some time. Then one day he discovered why from a group of monks who had just arrived from there. Their king had recently died, and a severe famine was ravaging the country. The best monks had all fled. If he had any questions, he could ask them. He did just that, devoting a whole chapter of his Record to Ceylon based on what the monks told him, and then joined them on their pilgrimage to the North.
I knew Ajanta, my next destination, would have everything, unlike Kanchipuram. For some unknown reason, Xuanzang did not visit it. However he described it from what he must have heard from other monks and traders because Ajanta was so famous then and remains so now. ‘In the east of the country is a mountain range, ridges succeeding ridges, peaks succeeding peaks, all surmounting steep cliffs of rock. In a deep valley lies a Buddhist monastery, its lofty halls and long chambers quarried in the stone. Tiers of canopied portals and terraces one above another lean back against the rock and face a ravine.’
As is so often the case, I was finding that Xuanzang’s is the only historical record. Ajanta was lost for centuries, and was rediscovered only in 1819 by a British soldier hunting a tiger: he saw it going into a cave, and followed it. From that point on the beauty and grandeur of the caves were revealed, and the world came to know of the greatness of Buddhist art at its height. I had seen photographs of the sculpted temples and reproductions of the murals, but nothing prepared me for the reality. Xuanzang’s description of the setting is remarkably accurate, considering that he never visited Ajanta. From close to, the place has the air of a pastoral dream, a horseshoe-shaped valley surrounding a tree-covered hill with a stream winding round it. The sheer scale of the site impressed me even more, cave after cave, temple after temple, mural after mural.
I walked through one of the ‘canopied portals’ into Cave 26, the only one that Xuanzang described in detail. He says, ‘This monastery was built by the A-che-lo of Western India’ for monks on their retreat in the rainy season, and an inscription confirms it: ‘The monk Achara (A-che-lo) built a cave dwelling for the Buddha out of gratitude’. There was the statue of the Buddha he mentions, though it is a reclining, not an upright one; as the evening light filtered into the cave, it glowed and radiated calm, like the Nirvana statue in Kushinagar. Xuanzang continues, ‘The four walls are covered with sculpted scenes of the Buddha performing various good deeds, of the propitious signs when he became enlightened, and of the omens attending his final passing away.’
The carvings are still there – the first caves of Ajanta were hewn in the second century BC, and Cave 26 in the fifth century AD. Not only that, every panel and pillar is finely carved, and a majestic stupa in the centre rises fifty feet from floor to ceiling. When I lifted my head to look up at the ceiling, its enormous vault carved to imitate wooden beams, I asked myself how many decades this took, every inch created with nothing but a hammer and chisel. It is as if the artists wanted to demonstrate their faith by breathing life into the cold stone – as if they could make permanent what the Buddha told them was impermanent.
Xuanzang did not mention this, but Ajanta is even more famous for its murals than for its sculpture. And I understood why when I saw them. The sculpture inspires reverence and awe; it is there to be worshipped. But the murals are rich and exuberant; they embrace you with grace and sensuality. As well as Buddhist messages, they carry all the marks of their era, and provide a panorama of how Indians lived in ancient times. The courtly life is depicted with some extravagance, the royals and aristocrats going about their pleasures with joy and zest, but the whole of society unfolds in front of you, ascetics and priests, towns and countryside, people of every kind, farmers, artisans, entertainers, musicians. It is history alive in pictures, most of which were produced in the fifth and sixth centuries. I felt I was seeing just what Xuanzang saw in his years in India.
The finest of all the caves is Cave 1, where a great seated Buddha in a recess of carved panels faces you as you enter. On either side are the most magnificent of all the murals. I lingered in front of each of them, but I could not help being aware that I was coming to the one where most visitors stop longest: finally I stood before the Bodhisattva with the blue lotus. It is so finely painted, you see at once why it focuses everyone’s attention. The longer you contemplate it, the more you are held by the tender sadness, the serene concern, the compassionate gaze. As Basham, the great historian of India, put it: ‘The Bodhisattva has shared the sorrows of the world; his gentle eyes have seen countless ages of pain, and his delicately formed lips have spoken words of consolation to countless sufferers. The artist has conveyed its message: the universe is not indifferent to the sorrows and strivings of its creatures.’ I only wished Xuanzang had been here.
Instead, he went further north and one of the places he recorded with special attention was Malava, the modern Malwa. It had by far the largest number of monks of any place in India in the Record, some 20,000, and the most Buddha-like king, who never spoke a harsh word to his people, and even had the drinking water filtered in case small insects were killed. But what impressed Xuanzang in particular was something more secular. ‘Their language is elegant and clear. Their learning is wide and profound,’ he tells us. Perhaps he heard about Kalidasa, the greatest Sanskrit poet and dramatist, who lived in Malava in the fifth century, and whose plays are still performed today. His amorous verses are loved by Indians, but Xuanzang might have been pleased by this somewhat more decorous couplet:
I bow to the parents of this universe, Parvati and Shiva; like words and their meaning are they entwined.
I pray that my words and their meaning may shine forth through their grace.
Determined to see every corner of the holy land, and keen to learn from any master, however remote his monastery was, Xuanzang pushed on. His pilgrimage took him to the Kathiawar Peninsula on the Arabian Sea and the monasteries along the Indus River in present-day Pakistan before he returned to Nalanda in 639. He had already found the best of teachers there, unsurpassed in the rest of India.
But then one night he had a strange dream: Nalanda
was deserted; in the distance, a great fire was consuming all the villages and towns. He woke up disturbed. What could it mean? He thought about his dream for several days, and divined it as an omen telling him to return home. When the monks heard of his decision, they all tried to make him change his mind. He was in the holy land of the Buddha, in the best monastery, in the company of incomparable teachers. Why did he want to go back to China, where ‘good people are not respected and the Dharma is despised, which is why the Buddha was not born in that country’? The roads were so dangerous. How could he be sure he would return in one piece? They asked Shilabhadra to persuade him to stay. Hui Li tells us how Xuanzang explained himself to his teacher:
India is where the Buddha was born and I am very happy here. But my purpose in coming was to study the Great Law and then use my knowledge for the benefit of all living creatures. I have visited and adored the sacred sites of our religion, and heard the profound exposition of all the various schools. My mind has been overjoyed, and my visit here has been of the utmost profit. Now I want to go back and translate the texts I have studied, so that anyone so disposed may have access to what I have learned.
To Shilabhadra, Xuanzang spoke like a true Bodhisattva, and he embodied the very qualities of one – discipline, renunciation, truthfulness, forbearance, determination, wisdom and compassion. How could he stop him from propagating the Dharma?
