Johan Elverskog - Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road (Encounters with Asia)

Johan Elverskog

PENN

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS

PHILADELPHIA OXFORD

Copyright 2010 University of Pennsylvania Press

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.

Published by

University of Pennsylvania Press

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Elverskog, Johan.

Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road / Johan Elverskog.

p. cm.Encounters with Asia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8122-4237-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. IslamRelationsBuddhism. 2. BuddhismRelationsIslam.

3. IslamSilk RoadHistory. 4. BuddhismSilk

RoadHistory.

BP173.B9 E48 2010

294.3'35095 22

2009044830

For my mother

A man came to the Prophet and said, O Messenger of God! Who among the people is the most worthy of my good companionship? The Prophet said, Your mother. The man said, Then who? The Prophet said, Then your mother. The man further asked, Then who? The Prophet said, Then your mother. The man asked again, Then who? The Prophet said, Then your father.

Hadth of al-Bukhri, No. 5586

Even if one should carry about one's mother on one shoulder and one's father on the other, and while doing so should live a hundred years, reach the age of a hundred years; and if one should attend to them by anointing them with salves, by massaging, bathing and rubbing their limbs, and they should even void their excrement thereeven by that would one not do enough for one's parents, one would not repay them. Even if one were to establish one's parents as the supreme lords and rulers over this earth so rich in the seven treasures, one would not do enough for them, one would not repay them. What is the reason for this? Parents do much for their children: they bring them up, feed them and guide them through this world.

Aguttara Nikya, II, iv, 2

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

I was ordered to fight all men until they say There is no god but Allah.

Prophet Muhammad's farewell address

The ascetic Gotama roars his lion's roar, in company and confidently, they question him and he answers, he wins them over with his answers, they find it pleasing and are satisfied.

Mahsihanada Sutta, Dgha Nikya

T HE BUDDHIST MONASTERY of Nalanda was founded in northeast India in the early fifth century. Over time it became the premier institution of higher learning in Asia and, much like leading universities today, Nalanda had a world-renowned faculty working on the cutting edge of the theoretical sciences and a student body drawn from across the Buddhist world. The savagery was so great it signaled the end of the Dharma in India.

This powerful story has been told countless times. Today it is ubiquitous, being found in everything from scholarly monographs to travel brochures. Indeed, by its sheer pervasiveness, this one episode has in many ways come to encapsulate and symbolize the entire thirteen-hundred-year history of Buddhist-Muslim interaction. And on account of this, whenever the topic of Buddhism and Islam is ever mentioned it almost invariably revolves around the Muslim destruction of the Dharma.

This is problematic for many reasons, not the least being that the story of Nalanda is not true. For example, not only did local Buddhist rulers make deals with the new Muslim overlords and thus stay in power, Or, in other words, Buddhists and Muslims lived together on the Asian subcontinent for almost a thousand years.

Why is this not better known? There are numerous possible explanations for this and they range from Buddhist prophecies of decline to the problems of contemporary scholarship. Indeed, rather than exploring the complex economic, environmental, political, and religious history of India, or simply the Buddhist tradition's own failings, it was clearly much easier to simply blame the Muslims.

In this regard the Buddhists established a precedent that was to subsequently drive South Asian history.

This pervasive anti-Muslim view is, of course, not unique to medieval Buddhist and contemporary Hindu historiography. It has also been a part of the Jewish and Christian tradition ever since Muhammad received God's final revelation through the angel Gabriel in the early seventh century. Many have also argued that the modern western construction of itself as the paragon of righteousness was often done at the expense of Islam. Yet even though such orientalism has been roundly critiqued by decades of scholarship, these earlier views persist.

Indeed, in the popular imagination there are probably no two traditions more different than Buddhism and Islam. One is synonymous with peace, tranquility, and introspection, the other with violence, chaos, and blind faith. One conjures up images of Himalayan hermitages and Japanese rock gardens, the other primitive and dirty villages with burqa-clad women. And while Buddhism is seen as modern, its teachings even in tune with the most cutting-edge science,

This modern Buddhism had many authors, from British colonial officials to Asian nationalists and German philosophers to Russian Theosophists. It also made Buddhism, the meditative path for individual liberation, the very antithesis of Islam.

With this in mind it makes sense why so few question the story of Nalanda's destruction. It is a perfect story with the requisite and well-known actors playing their appropriate roles. Moreover, in recent years this story has not simply been some event long lost in the fog of history, or an abstract frame with which to map and order the chaotic progression of history, but rather a concrete reality. During the month of March in 2001, it played out on television screens around the world when the Taliban used tanks and anti-aircraft weapons to demolish the colossal Buddha statues of Bamiyan ().

This wanton act of destruction not only reenacted the story of Nalanda, but also reaffirmed all of our stereotypes. What better image could one have to encapsulate Buddhist-Muslim history than a group of fanatical Muslim militants senselessly mauling the peaceful and passive representations of the Buddha in the name of Islam? That is invariably how it was presented in the international media. Little thought, however, was given to the possible historical contingencies shaping this event; much less the fact that the statues had until then somehow survived thirteen-hundred years of Muslim rule. This was another of those inconvenient facts that somehow muddied the story. It was perhaps better not to think about it since, if one did, it opened the door for the whole messy reality of history to come rushing in, and this could very well challenge, possibly even shatter, the conventional narrative that has been told these last one thousand years.