Lecture 11: The Vanished

Path, Part III

27th January 2017

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The title The Vanished Path: refers to the trail of early historic
sites of Buddhism extending through Northern India and Nepal,
where the religion was born but nearly disappeared later, although
the faith later spread to other regions, splitting into 2 main
branches, geographically aligned along the “Southern Buddhism”
of Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam,
and the “Northern Buddhism” of China, Japan, Korea, Tibet, and
Mongolia. Southern Buddhism has been often been considered as
‘Theravada’ and Northern Buddhism as ‘Mahayana’.

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After the Buddha, who is said to have lived through ca. 563 BC to 483 BC, had
preached to diverse audiences for over four decades, his followers initially
attempted to commit his teachings to memory. About four centuries after the
Buddha’s death, these teachings were written down in Sri Lanka, where
Buddhism had spread through the agency of the Indian Buddhist emperor
Ashoka. These writings comprise the Pali ‘canon’ of Buddhist scripture, which
has been considered to form the core of the Theravada tradition, i.e. ‘the
tradition of the Elders’.

In contrast to the ‘Theravada’ tradition, ‘Mahayana’ Buddhism or the ‘Great

Vehicle’ began as a countercultural movement based upon ‘newly composed
texts’ or sutras, which the earlier Buddhist schools refused to accept ‘as
authoritative’. The followers of the ‘Mahayana’ referred to these earlier schools
as ‘Hinayana,’ ‘often rendered euphemistically’ as the ‘Lesser Vehicle,’ although
hina also signifies ‘inferior,’ ‘base,’ and ‘vile.’ The term ‘Hinayana’ is commonly
substituted in the West by the term ‘Theravada,’ although the ‘Theravada’
constitutes only one of many ‘Hinayana’ schools which still exist.
Cf. Donald S. Lopez Jr., “Introduction: Buddhism,” Religions of
Asia in Practice: An Anthology, ed. Donald S. Lopez Jr. (Princeton
& Woodstock: Princeton University Press, 2002) 165-96.

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The subtitle: A Graphic Travelogue: non-fiction genre of travel
literature.

Protagonists: The author, delineated by his first name, Bharath, and his
wife, Alka.

Plot: As novitiates to the Buddhist faith, the protagonists travel

through the archaeological sites associated with the birth,
enlightenment, teachings, monastic guidelines, and the death of the
Buddha.
Key themes: Religious and cultural identity. We’ll look at these themes
by focusing on aspects of religious violence and conflict in the text.

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This image appears to exemplify
the protagonists’ feelings of
serenity and deep
understanding at the various
archaeological sites. Here the
protagonists stand at the ruins
of Kapilavastu in Nepal, where
the Buddha is reputed to have
spent the early years of his life,
before he preached in areas
which now comprise northern
India.
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 The peaceful air of
Kapilavastu contrasts with the
raucousness of everyday life
shown, especially in Northern
India.

The Hindi text on the poster

(bottom right) says “Lord Shiva
is the Guru even today” (p.
21). Lord Shiva belongs to the
Hindu pantheon of gods, and
the poster makes it look as if
everyone is a believer in Lord
Shiva, but of course Bharath’s
incredulous look makes it clear
that this is not true.

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India has a multi-religious society with a majority Hindu population, significant
Muslim and Christian minority populations and a tiny Buddhist minority.
Religious Composition Population * (%)
Hindus 827,578,868 80.5
Muslims 138,188,240 13.4
Christians 24,080,016 2.3
Sikhs 19,215,730 1.9
Buddhists 7,955,207 0.8
Jains 4,225,053 0.4
Other Religions & Persuasions 6,639,626 0.6
Religion not stated 727,588 0.1
Total * 1,028,610,328 100.0

Source: http://censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/India_at_glance/religion.aspx

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 In the following extracts on
secularism from Nobel laureate
Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative
Indian (New York: Picador, 2005),
you can get an overview of the
historical appearance and current
presence of different religions in
India today. 8
 “The long history of heterodoxy a bearing not only on the development
and survival of democracy in India, it has also richly contributed, I would
argue, to the emergence of secularism in India, and even to the form that
Indian secularism takes, which is not exactly the same as the way secularism
is defined in parts of the West. The tolerance of religious diversity is
implicitly reflected in India’s having served as a shared home—in the
chronology of history—for Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Jews, Christians,
Muslims, Parsees, Sikhs, Baha’is and others. The Vedas, which date back at
least to the middle of the second millennium BCE, paved the way to what is
now called Hinduism (that term was devised much later by Persians and
Arabs, after the river Sindhu or Indus). Buddhism and Jainism had both
emerged by the sixth century BCE. Buddhism, the practice of which is now
rather sparse in India, was the dominant religion of the country for nearly a
thousand years. Jainism, on the other hand, born at the same time as
Buddhism, has survived as a powerful Indian religion over two and a half
millennia.
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 Jews came to India, it appears, shortly after the fall of Jerusalem, though there
are other theories as well (including the claim that members of the Bene Israeli
community first arrived in the eighth century BCE, and more plausibly, that they
came in 175 BCE).Jewish arrivals continued in later waves, in the fifth and sixth
centuries from southern Arabia and Persia until the last wave of Baghdadi Jews
from Iraq and Syria, mostly to Bombay and Calcutta, in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. Christians, too, came very early, and by the fourth century
there were large Christian communities in what is now Kerala. Parsees started
arriving in the late seventh century, as soon as persecution of Zoroastrianism began
in Persia. The Baha’is were among the last groups to seek refuge in India, in the last
century. Over this long period there were other migrations, including the
settlement of Muslim Arab traders, which began on India’s western coast in the
eighth century, well before the invasions that came from other Muslim countries
via the more warlike north-western routes. There were in addition many
conversions, especially to Islam. Each religious community managed to retain its
identity within India’s multi-religious spectrum.
(16-17)

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 Secularism in contemporary India, which received legislative formulation in the post-
independence constitution of the Indian Republic, contains strong influences of Indian
intellectual history, including the championing of intellectual pluralism. One reflection of this
historical connection is that Indian secularism takes a somewhat different form and makes
rather different demands from the more austere Western versions, such as the French
interpretation of secularism which is supposed to prohibit even personal display of religious
symbols or conventions in state institutions at work. Indeed, there are two principal
approaches to secularism, focusing respectively on (1) neutrality between different religions,
and (2) prohibition of religious associations in state activities. Indian secularism has tended to
emphasise neutrality in particular, rather than prohibition in general.

It is the ‘prohibitory’ aspect that has been the central issue in the recent French
decision to ban the wearing of headscarves by Muslim women students, on the ground that it
violates secularism. It can, however, be argued that such a prohibition could not be justified
specifically on grounds of secularism, if we accept the ‘neutrality’ interpretation of secularism
that has powerfully emerged in India. The secular demand that the state be ‘equidistant’ from
different religions (including agnosticism and atheism) need not disallow any person
individually—irrespective of his or her religion—from deciding from to wear, so long as
members of different faiths are treated symmetrically.”
(19-20) 11
 From the above extracts we can
appreciate that Buddhism used to be
a dominant religion in India. In fact
part of the reason for its early
popularity lay in its egalitarianism, as
compared to the hierarchies of the
Hindu caste system (see next slide).
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http://www.english-online.at/geography/india/caste-system-in-hinduism.gif

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 Murthy mentions Osamu Tezuka’s
Buddha (1972-83) as an inspiration for
his work in his “Acknowledgements.”

Osamu Tezuka’s work is

characterised by social realism in
depicting the historical operations of
elitism and discrimination through the
Hindu caste system in early Indian
civilisation. The first volume of Buddha
depicts the “vain and decadent”
tendencies within the priestly caste of
the Brahmins, the oppression of people
on the lower rungs of the caste ladder,
and the rise of Buddhism as a reformist
response to “Brahmin shamming” and a
search for “alternate paths to happiness
and peace of mind” (11-16).
The Vanished Path shows the
abiding legacy of the caste
system in the way that random
strangers keep asking Bharath
and Alka what Hindu castes they
belong to, even though it is
obvious that they do not agree
with, as Alka states, the
“extremely discriminative”
principles of the Hindu caste
system (p. 118).
As Bharath and Alka visit a
café in Kushinagar, the
owner T.K. Roy invokes the
documented role of
Buddhism, in modern times,
in opening up an alternative
to those oppressed by the
Hindu caste system (p. 50).
The statesman Dr. B.R.
Ambedkar (1891-1956),
mentioned by the
bespectacled café-owner,
was the architect of the
national Constitution, which
came into force in 1950,
shortly after Independence
from British rule in 1947.
Ambedkar came from the
communities formerly
stigmatised by upper-caste
Hindus as untouchables. He
himself converted to
Buddhism in 1956, setting
the stage for a mass
conversion of fellow-
community members
whom he referred to as the
“dalits” or the
“downtrodden,” which
engendered what has been
called the “Dalit Buddhist
movement” (see previous
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slide).
 Let’s move on to
the theme of inter-
religious conflict now.
On p. 53 we see
Nandratna
Bhikku’s
newspaper
“Buddha Jyoti”
(“Jyoti” means “light”
in Hindi).

Below the main

article is an article
with a caption about
the genie in the
bottle at Ayodhya
(the Hindi text is just
about decipherable
here).
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 Ayodhya, a town in northern India, has been known traditionally as
the mythological birthplace of Lord Rama, the protagonist of the ancient
Indian epic The Ramayana. In 1992, the centuries-old Islamic Mughal
mosque, the Babri Masjid, was demolished by Hindu hard-liners, acting
on claims that there had been a Hindu temple commemorating the exact
birthplace of Lord Rama where the Islamic mosque stood. Following the
demolition of the mosque, religious riots gripped the Indian subcontinent
(spilling over from India to Pakistan and Bangladesh), leaving more than
2000 people dead. The event marked a turning point in the rise of Hindu
nationalism, renting apart the relatively secular fabric of the nation,
governed by the political party called the Congress (I) at the time.
Cf. Harsh Mander, Looking Away: Inequality,
Prejudice and Indifference in New India (New Delhi:
Speaking Tiger, 2015) 214-22.
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The Hindu
hard-line
movement
was supported
by one of the
leading
political
parties in India
Bharatiya
Janata Party
(BJP). The
poster on the
wall here
shows L.K.
Advani, one of
the leaders of
the BJP (46).
 The legal disputes that arose from the religious
conflicts in 1992, which continued through years, are
invoked in Alka and Bharath’s niggling anxiety about the
“verdict” surrounding the “Ayodhya dispute” through
their journey in 2010. The protagonists track news and
current affairs from time to time, and even in Nepal
they are keen to ascertain that there has been no
violence following the “verdict” in Ayodhya (2, 104).

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 The inter-religious riots following the
events in Ayodhya were featured, among
other films, in the film Bombay (1995).
The film depicts a romance between a
Muslim woman and a Hindu man, whose
family members initially oppose their
relationship on religious grounds but
eventually get close and in fact die trying
to save each other in the riots. The film
was made originally in Tamil and dubbed
subsequently into Hindi (“Bollywood”
refers to Hindi films usually produced in
Bombay/Mumbai, but the film industry in
India covers many other kinds of films,
both commercial and arthouse).
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 The BJP is the
political party holding
the reigns of the
central/federal
government in India
today. Indian Prime
Minister Narendra
Modi (in office: 2014-
present), a leader of
the BJP, with
Chancellor Merkel.

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 Group discussion

Last week we started talking about whether The Vanished

Path might make one feel like converting to Buddhism, and if
this might be too political/controversial a topic for the
classroom at school level. What do you think? How would
you balance the teacher’s duty of imparting skills of critical
thinking to your students with the practical pressures of
time-management, working in line with school policy, etc.?

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 Various responses
a. The topic can be discussed with upper-secondary level students, provided
they are first familiarised with cultural rather than religious aspects of India
b. Can be discussed in classes on religion or even in English classes
c. The book can help build a teaching unit about India—depicts different
locations and ideologies without being preachy or putting Buddhism above
other religions. Students can trace the path of the travels on a map.
d. For upper-secondary students, the topic can help them think critically and
examine different opinions. Students can try to understand different cultures
and doctrines and relate Buddhism to current political issues such as animal
friendliness or animal rights and pacifism

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