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On the first Sunday of the Month of February 2004 (1st February, B.E. 2547), Dr. Chris A. Stanford, B.Ed., M.Phil., Ph.D., International Affairs Coordinator for the World Buddhist University, was the guest speaker at the Buddhist Forum. He spoke on the topic of “Istan Buddhism”. Dr. Stanford holds a Master of Philosophy degree in South Asian Archaeology and Anthropology, and a Ph.D. in South Asian Buddhist History and Philosophy. Dr. Stanford began his talk defining the term “Istan” as a suffix appended to the names of countries in Central Asia. The term means “home” or “homeland” as in Pakistan, the homeland of the “Paks,” Uzbekistan, the homeland of the “Uzbeks” and Afghanistan, the homeland of the “Afghans,” etc. Specifically, he wished to take a look at what transpired with the spread of Buddhism from its birthplace in the Ganges River valley of South Asia into Central Asia and beyond. Dr. Stanford wanted to look at what events took place when and where and what concurrent events facilitated the spread of Buddhism, and why. Most of us are familiar with the origins of Buddhism. We are aware of the birth of Siddartha, the early years of Siddartha’s privileged existence in the palace of his father, and his decision to abandon that lifestyle and pursue an answer to the question of why there is so much dissatisfaction and human suffering. He spent many years searching, finally coming up with the answer while meditating under a Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya. It occurred to him that the source of suffering was attachment. Interestingly enough, it is this same phenomenon of attachment that led to the expansion of the Buddhist philosophy into the regions of Central Asia. Two major factors facilitated and led to the spread of the Buddha’s teachings. One is geography, over which man has no control. The second is the expansion of commerce and trade, and the desire of people to have new material possessions and personal comforts. It is ironic that this desire for material things facilitated the spread of the Buddhist teachings, a philosophy that teaches, “ Do not become attached to material things.” When the Buddha attained Nirvana, his followers, the friendly monks of the day, got together to discuss what should be remembered of his teachings. This gathering became known as the first Buddhist council. A hundred years later, the number of monks had increased and a group of these monks said, “We are not remembering correctly! This is not what Siddartha said that we should pay attention to. We need to talk about this.” So, they arranged a second meeting to discuss what really was important of what Siddartha had said and what he wanted us to remember. Not surprisingly, there were differences of opinions at this caucus and these differences of opinion amongst the monks assembled at this second get-together led to a division between the monk communities, the sangha. One conservative group of monks, the Sthavira (today, known as Theravada), maintained that Siddartha was saying things about the everyday here and now worldly existence. A second, larger group of monks maintained what he might have said these mundane earthly things but in fact what the Buddha was saying was more supra mundane, more abstract. He was giving us a higher-level spiritual message, they argued. This second community of monks became known as the Mahasanghika (Maha means ‘large’ and sanghika means ‘community’ or ‘college’ of monks). This larger majority of reformist monks did not agree with the conservative Sthavira. In the following hundred or so years, the Sthavira found favor with the ruling leaders of the day in that part of India. One of those rulers was to be the renowned Emperor Ashoka. Meanwhile, the Mahasanghika filtered out to the fringes of the land. Both schools of monks migrated into Central Asia from northwest India. Ashoka abandoned warfare and adopted the more peaceful teachings of Siddartha as the state religion of his Mauryan Empire. His headquarters was in Pataliputra (modern day Patna) in the state of Bihar. Interestingly, Bihar is now a large Muslim state within India. Ashoka said, ”I want the teachings of the Buddha to be adopted by all the citizens of my realm.” In order to do that, he started inscribing Buddhist edicts on rocks and pillars and erecting them all over his domain in South Asia, in places where people could easily read them. At the time when Ashoka came to power, his grandfather Chandragupta I, who founded the Mauryan dynasty, had, by the time of his death, annexed a large region in northwest India called Gandhara, including an area across the Hindu Kush Mountains into what is now Afghanistan. Within the past dozen or so years, archaeologists have unearthed multi-lingual rock inscriptions erected by Ashoka in Jalalabad, Southern Afghanistan. These inscriptions were written not only in Sanskrit, which was the language of India at the time but also in the Gandhara and Greek languages. This tells us what was going on with Buddhism 250 years before Christ was born. We know now that Buddhist teachings and practices were present in what is now Afghanistan on the western slopes of the Hindu Kush Mountain 2,254 years ago. Before Ashoka’s agents traveled to Gandhara to erect his stone inscriptions, businessmen, exporters and importers, had already traveled there. Fine Indian spices, silks and Indian treasures of all kinds were exported into Central Asia. And, what was in Central Asia of value, imports from the Mediterranean and China, were brought back into India. The spread of Buddhism was an addendum to the commercial trade of the day. Communities of business people who went into Gandhara wanted to bring with them what they felt spiritually. They invited monks from India to join them in their travels. These monks established Buddhism beyond the borders of its birth-land. Following the third Buddhist council, which was some 150 years after the second Buddhist council, Mahasanghika monks migrated into the northwest India Kashmir valley and on into the region of Taxila. Taxila became a very important centre of Gandhara civilization and a locus for the expansion of the Mauryan Empire, and later Buddhism. From Taxila, these monks traveled north to the Swat valley, into an area called Gilgit, which is famous amongst Buddhist historians. It was at Gilgit that archeologists uncovered, in 1931, a collection of manuscripts, written in Sanskrit, and stored in clay jars kept in an old Buddhist temple. We now know, through the works of linguists and Buddhist researchers, that these manuscripts are Sarvastivada Buddhist text. They are the written record of what the Buddhists were teaching. Gilgit is in the northern part of Pakistan on the Karakoram highway. A word about geography; Three hundred and sixty million years ago, what is now known as the South Asian geotectonic plate migrated across the surface of the earth and collided with the Central Asian geotectonic plate. This collision produced tremendous mountain building. The most famous of these resulting mountain ranges is the Himalayas, only one of about a dozen separate mountain ranges that occupy the region from Nepal and Tibet through Central Asia over to the Caspian sea, and up into Russia. All the ‘Istan’ countries are home to mountain ranges that extend to the Taklamakan desert in the extreme west of China. These mountain ranges present a physical barrier to people moving. Because the Hindu Kush mountain range was easier to cross than were the Karakoram mountains, commerce spread over the Hindu Kush mountains hundreds of years before it spread over the Karakoram. Also, Buddhism spread over the Hindu Kush into what is now Afghanistan hundreds of years before Buddhism spread over the Karakoram into the Tarim basin and the oasis towns surrounding the Taklamakan desert of Western China. The spread of Buddhism across the Karakoram into China happened shortly before the birth of Christ. Once we cross the Karakoram Mountains by way of the Khunjerab Pass, or across the Hindu Kush mountains by way of the Khyber Pass, we come to a very broad expanse of communication links known as the Silk Road. It is not just one road but is a series of trade routes that went all the way from the East Coast of the Mediterranean through to Xi’an in China. This Silk Road existed for hundreds of years before Buddhism came into the area. Once here, Buddhism became attractive to many different groups of people who were wandering along these roads and across their mountain passes. Greek merchants, traveling east through Central Asia, came in contact with the Gandhara region of Central Asia. When the Greeks, who had a long history of representing their Gods in human form, came into contact with the teachings of Buddhism, that had no human-like representation of Siddartha, thought of representing the Buddha as a person emerged. Up to that point, the ‘Enlightened One’ was represented in art form through such things as a wheel, an empty chair or a footprint. The Greeks then injected their artistic representation methods into Buddhism. They started to draw the Buddha as a person. This became a Gandhara art form that is world famous today. It is a mixture of Central Asian art techniques, Buddhist teachings and Greek and Roman art forms of expression. The first representation of the Buddha as a person resembles a Greek God with long robes finely draped about the body. There are splendid examples of the Buddha dressed in Greek-like robes with all the pleats so characteristic of the representations of the Greek God, Apollo. As the Greek artisans came to know the teachings of the Buddha better, they attempted to represent the phases of the Buddha’s life. A well-known period in the Buddha’s life was when he tested the extremes of existence, extreme indulgence and extreme denial. He tried the extreme of asceticism and denied himself every human creature pleasure including food. He denied himself eating and became very thin. There is a very famous Gandhara representation of the Buddha, carved in black slate, showing the Buddha with ribs pushing at thin skin and with hollow cheeks. This human representation of the Buddha developed throughout the evolution of Central Asian society. This ‘here and now’, earthly representation of the Buddha reflect Sthavira thinking. In March 2001, the Taleban of Afghanistan who were imparting their Islamic beliefs, destroyed two very large Buddhist statues created over 1,500 years ago in the Bamiyan valley. The larger one was about 56 meters tall and the smaller one was 35 meters tall. They were not built at the same time. The shorter of the two was erected some 150 years before the larger one was constructed. In examining the art forms represented by both of these icons, we see an evolution of not only an art form but also of a philosophical belief system. The Buddha has become less human and more superhuman. The fact that the second statue built 150 years after the first statue was one and a half times as large is not a matter of accident. A statement is being made in that: “the smaller statue does not really represent the Buddha. The Buddha is huge and we cannot build a statue big enough. But we can only build this one this big.” And they built one as big as they could at that time. In fact, that remained the largest standing Buddha statue in the world until the Taleban in their wisdom decided to destroy them. The Buddhist thinking that evolved in Bamiyan originated way back in Patna with the third Buddhist council. The larger group of monks, the Mahasanghika, believed that the Buddha was more than just an earthly human being. This new type of philosophical thinking spread with the monks who traveled into Afghanistan and Central Asia. The monks who went to Jalalabad on the order of Ashoka a couple of hundred years earlier brought with them Sthavira Buddhism, not Mahasanghika Buddhism. The monks that spread into Afghanistan and beyond following the third Buddhist council and following Ashoka’s monks, brought with them Mahasanghika practices and beliefs. They crossed the Khyber Pass and went right up to the Central Asian countries, including what became the five Soviet Socialist Republic: Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. These five countries together with Afghanistan and Pakistan are home to “Istan Buddhism,” as termed by Dr. Chris Stanford. And each of these seven countries has turned up remains of the existence of a Buddhist community. Ancient Chinese travelogues record the existence of Buddhism in Central Asia over a period of several centuries. Chinese emperors during the Han dynasty sent their monks to India in search of original Sanskrit writings of the Buddhist Tripitaka. There were several Chinese monks very anxious to find the original Buddha teaching in Sanskrit rather than in the Gandhara translation. These monks kept excellent records of their travels. This is in contrast to a number of Indian missionaries who went up into China and left no written record at all. The Chinese travelogues provide us with one of our main sources of information about the state of Buddhism in Central Asia over several centuries. During the Afghan civil war in the 1980’s, when the Russians invaded Afghanistan, one of the most regrettable casualties was the destruction of a rare Sanskrit manuscript collection housed in the Kabul museum. Both sides in the conflict bombed the museum destroying valuable artifacts housed therein. During the rule of the Taleban, there was a movement to take out of Afghanistan every single Sanskrit manuscript retrievable. One of these collections is housed in the University of Oslo in Norway. Called the Schoyen collection, it consists of 1,400 Sanskrit manuscripts from Afghanistan - and is for sale. One can buy the entire collection for 100,000,000 US dollars! North of Afghanistan, appended to the Silk Road, is Uzbekistan. A major city of which is Samarkand, an extremely old community. Samarkand was a major commercial centre on the Silk Road 500 years before the introduction of Buddhism into Central Asia. There is a mosque in Samarkand, the Magok-I-Attari mosque, built upon a Zoroastrian temple that in turn was constructed on a Buddhist monastery. This gives us a view of the evolution of religious practice in Samarkand. Buddhism has a long history in that area. Southern Uzbekistan has turned up fragments of Buddhist temples, Buddhist Stupas and many Buddhist shrines. In addition, the largest reclining Buddha in Central Asia was found in Tajikistan. Buddhism also set roots and thrived in Kyrgyzstan as Buddhist remnants can be seen along the rivers and lake of northeastern Kyrgyzstan. In Kazakhstan, different sites of Buddhist culture can be found in many cities along the valleys and mountains close to the Chinese border and beyond. Turkmenistan provided an interesting mix of Iranian Islamic culture and Gandhara Buddhist culture. This has become a point of exchange, as was Bamiyan in Gandhara where Buddhism came in contact with Greek culture causing a transformation in the form of philosophy and belief in the Buddhist teachings. There was an Iranian spin put on the teachings of the Buddha or what they believed to be the teachings of the Buddha at that time. Buddhists in Turkmenistan took to the use of caves for isolation and for facilitating meditation. How is it that such large icons of Buddhism as the Bamiyan statues came to be in Central Asia? It was because of the spread of commerce along the Silk Road, because of the merchants who traveled along the Silk Road taking with them Buddhist teachings and Buddhist monks. The merchants did not follow the monks; the monks followed the merchants. Business was the driving force. At this juncture, Dr. Stanford made comments about the origins of Tibetan Buddhism, as it is very popular nowadays. We get a lot of questions like “How is Tibetan Buddhism different from Thai Buddhism?” at the World Buddhist University and the World Fellowship of Buddhists. In 569 CE, two beautiful princesses converted the Tibetan King to Buddhism; one was a Nepalese and the other Chinese. At that time, Tibet had no alphabet or written language. The King wanted his country to know more about Buddhism. The king ordered monks to create a Tibetan writing system and to go to Kashmir looking for source document on Buddhist philosophy and practice. He wanted a written record of the Buddhist teachings that he knew were present in Kashmir, in the Swat valley, in Gilgit and in Taxila. From there, Tibetan Buddhism blossomed and flourished into what we now know and recognize today. Tibetan explorations in the sixth and seventh centuries CE, and the translations of Indian Sanskrit writings, Chinese translations of those writings and other Central Asian translations of Buddhist writings, all led to this development. Dr. Stanford then offered final comments about Islam, which has been with us since the prophet Mohammed. Within 250 years of the death of Mohammed, Islam has spread into Central Asia. There was no major geographic barrier between the regions where the prophet Mohammed developed his religion and the countries of Central Saia. As a result, the Islamic belief spread east of the Caspian Sea with great speed into Central Asia and to the ‘Istan’ countries and, in the process, coming in contact with Buddhism. Contrary to what as a popularly belief today, as Islam advanced, Buddhism was not destroyed. This is a myth. There was a very interesting synthesis between Islamic religious practice today and Buddhist practice today which stems from Buddhist practice 1,400 years ago before the birth of Mohammed.. In most of the five former Soviet Asian Republics, the form of Islam that is practiced is Sufism. If it is not the predominant form, it is certainly a large minority practice within these Central Asian countries. Kazakh Sufis strongly believe in rebirth, which is a Buddhist belief. They also believe in reincarnation of past Sufi masters; rebirth is also a part of Buddhist teachings. In addition, Sufis believe in building stupas as gravesites to their deceased masters. Sufis circumambulate them. In Tibet, Nepal and Northeastern West Bengal in India, people circumambulate their stupas. This is clearly a Buddhist practice and a form of cultural borrowing from Buddhism by Islam. This cultural borrowing also includes meditation practices used by Islamic Sufis. The practice of meditation, as a long-standing tradition of Sufism, includes the recitation of mantras, an Islamic equivalence of Buddhist mantras. These are often combined with breathing exercises; again, reminiscent of Buddhist anapanasati. These practical elements of Buddhism that appear in Islam in Central Asia in the ‘Istan’ countries are a part of what Dr. Stanford regards as ‘Istan’ Buddhism. Hence, Istan Buddhism is alive and well in Islam. When the floor was opened to questions, one was asked, if any religion existed at all at the time when Buddhism penetrated Central Asia. Dr. Stanford said it was mostly in the form of animism. At that time, Islam did not exist and before Islam was Zoroastrianism, recognizing the importance of fire. Buddhism did not enter Central Asia as an evangelical faith and did not supplant any other religion. It went as a comfort for the merchants who would travel from South Asia into Central Asia in search of commerce. As Islam has evolved within the last century, for good reasons, it has felt threat and has become somewhat defensive of any other religion existing along side it. Buddhism is experiencing a regeneration in the five former Soviet Socialist Republics. This has happened as a result of two major factors: 1) the increased independence of their experience since the break up of the Soviet Union in 1989 and, 2) the revival of interest in Buddhism and the search for Buddhist artifacts, and the archaeological exercises by European countries, most notably Russia, Germany, France and England. In North America, many U.S. universities have taken up the search for the origins of Buddhism in Central Asia. This interest in the turning up of evidence of pre-existing Buddhism has generated a revival of interest in current Buddhism. Another question concerning the near disappearance of Buddhism in India, Dr. Stanford pointed out that he did his PhD dissertation on Gupta period Buddhism and his main thesis was that Buddhism never really did disappear from India. What happened was that Buddhism changed form. If we examined the evolution of Hindu practices and Buddhism, we see that Hindu practice during the Gupta Empire and the years following, up to the point where, from the north came the Muslim conquerors out of Afghanistan penetrating the Indus valley civilizations and finally the Ganges valley, we find a transformation of Hinduism and Buddhism. Buddhism was absorbed by Hindu practice. Many elements of Buddhist practice came out in a modification of Hindu practice. In terms of why noteworthy Buddhist personalities did not continue to exist in India, the answer is clear as they suffered their demise at the horrible minds and hands of those who disagreed with what they represented. As a matter of fact, Buddhism did not disappear from India, it only changed form within India. Another query was why the Moslem invasion happened in India. Dr. Stanford said it was probably for the same reason that Alexander the Great crossed the Indus River for the land and the rich wealth that South Asia represented. It was a ‘land-grab’. Further question could be asked why it became such an easy job for the Muslim invaders; why there was not more resistance offered. The answer might be that at the time of the Moslem invasion in India, there was no united resistance. India was broken into different serfdoms. Dr. Stanford also added that Buddhism did not reach Greece at the time of Alexander the Great, as communication was not that well developed. Buddhism would have penetrated the Mediterranean countries probably later than that with the expanding silk trade. The Buddhism that reached Greece and Rome came from Central Asia and China. In his opinion, for peaceful coexistence between different religious societies to exist, it should take into account a respect for other persons and their beliefs in addition to our beliefs. He further suggested that the news media and news program should present more positive aspects of life rather than the negative ones; but negative news sells, he said. What happened in the Southern part of Thailand was regrettable but it was not representative of what is happening in Southern Thailand on the whole. We should get a more balanced story about what is really going on in South Thailand and indeed all over the world. The majority of humans, Dr. Stanford said, do live a peaceful multi-religious coexistence.
Moderator: Dr. Somboon Duangsamosorn
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