10.1. A polemic and a high-brow debate

Now that Christians have started talking about “Jesus the Jew”, it is to be expected that Hindus and Buddhists should explore the notion “Buddha the Hindu”, or at least to highlight the Hindu foundations on which the Buddha built.  It is now fairly widely accepted that Jesus was a millennarist cult leader inside the Jewish fold who did not conceive of his own message and mission as a new religion; the question may be asked whether the Buddha was not likewise an innovator within the Hindu tradition.  But so far, that question has only been raised by the Hindu Revivalists and a lone Western scholar, certainly not by Buddhists, and to secularists the question is mere proof of evil Hindu imperialist (“boa constrictor”) designs.

According to BJP leader and Home Minister L.K. Advani, the Buddha “did not announce any new religion.  He was only restating with a new emphasis the ancient ideals of the Indo-Aryan civilisation”.¹ Advani reportedly provoked the dismay of a handful of foreign Buddhist scholars by saying that the Buddha “derived his teachings from the Bhagwad Gita and was an avatar of Vishnu”.² And the dismay of the polemicizing secularists who reported the event and claimed that “Buddhism arose as a distinct faith, in revolt against hierarchical Hinduism” while Advani’s position amounted to “communal poison”.³

Yet, when Hindu Revivalists claim Buddhism as a continuous evolute of Hinduism, they join an established viewpoint articulated by Western scholars with no axe to grind.  Christian Lindtner quotes with approval Dharmakirti’s list of four doctrines of contemporaneous Brahmanism which Buddhism rejected: “The authority of the Veda, the doctrine of a Creator of the world, the conviction that rituals can cause moral purity, and the haughtiness based on claims of birth”.  Then Lindtner adds: “Apart from that, ancient Indian Buddhism should be seen as reformed Brahmanism.”⁴ He shows that Vedic “cosmogonic speculations and Vedic exegesis were vital and formative for Gautama’s way of thinking”, that after the Vedic injunction, he was “concerned with tad ekam beyond sat and asat”.⁵ After presenting many more Vedic concepts adopted by Buddhism, Lindtner summarizes that “early (canonical) Buddhism to a very considerable extent can and should be seen as reformed Brahmanism”.⁶

Though Western scholarship is usually invoked as the ultimate trump card with which to silence opponents, the Buddha-separatist authors prefer to ignore or dismiss it in this case.  Thus, Buddhist scholar Davidi.  Kalupahana, who rejects the inclusion of Buddhism in Hinduism, is irritated with Western scholarship: “Hindu scholars writing on Buddhism made such statements as this: ‘Early Buddhism is not an absolutely original doctrine.  It is no freak in the evolution of Indian thought.’ But even a more sober scholar from the West felt that ‘Buddhism started from special Indian beliefs, which it took for granted.  The chief of these were the belief in transmigration and the doctrine of retribution of action (…) They were already taken for granted as a commonly accepted view of life by most Indian religions.’”⁷

Kalupahana calls these views “unhistorical”, “uncritical” and “superficial”; and by implication, he calls them “not sober”, and ridicules them for denying that Buddhism was “a freak in the evolution of Indian thought”.⁸ This is but one instance of the humourless reaction of contemporary Buddhists against the suspicion that Buddhism was not sent down in a flash from heaven, but developed organically from its Hindu roots.

The first one to hold these views which irritate certain modern Buddhists may well have been the Buddha himself, who claimed to teach “the ancient way along which the previous Buddhas walked”.⁹ His pride lay not in being original, but in being a representative of a timeless truth: “The Buddhas who have been and who shall be, of these am I and what they did, I do.”¹⁰

Yet, the undeniable rootedness of the Buddha’s teachings in vaguely “Hindu” ideas and traditions does not exclude the possibility that at least on some doctrinal points, Buddhism does constitute a break-away, a definite rejection of some prevalent views and practices.  Four important points are sure to be mentioned in modern company: Buddhism’s purported rejection of caste inequality, the value of non-violence, the doctrine of No Self, and a pessimistic and avowedly escapist view of the world.  They will all be considered in this and the next chapter.

10.2. Buddhism as India’s state religion

The relation between Hinduism and Buddhism, or between Brahmanism and Shramanism, i.e. the non-Vedic sects practising world-renunciation (celibate monkhood), has been one of intellectual controversy since antiquity.¹¹ Today, Shramanism is represented by the traditions of Jainism and Buddhism, but in the time of their eponymous founders, Vardhamana Mahavira Jina and Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha, there were dozens of separate Shramana sects with their distinctive doctrines and rules.  Vedic Hinduism has also incorporated Shramanism in the form of the Dashanami order of celibate monks founded by Shankaracharya (ca. 800 AD) and other Sadhu orders founded by a number of Sants.  In the rest of this chapter, we will only consider the attitude of the Hindu movement vis-à-vis Buddhism.

The Hindu position regarding Buddhism is also of some practical importance due to the following circumstances.  Firstly, the relations with Buddhist countries are considered to be of great political importance as a counterweight to the Western, Islamic and Communist blocs.  Secondly, Buddhism has made a remarkable but heavily politicized come-back in India, first with the conversion of Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar and millions of his Scheduled Caste followers (1956), and soon after with the settlement of a high-profile Tibetan refugee community and a Tibetan Government-in-Exile (1959).

The Hindutva position on Buddhism is generally not one of hostility, though in the past, Swami Dayananda and Veer Savarkar did write a few trenchant paragraphs criticizing Buddhism.  Today, the tendency is simply to include Buddhism in Hinduism, with very little effort to give a scholarly articulation to this claim apart from emphasizing the Bharatiya origin of Buddhism.

Buddhism was turned into “India’s undeclared state religion” by Jawaharlal Nehru.¹² Thus, he borrowed the Buddhist term Pancha Shila (five moral rules) to describe the “five principles of peaceful coexistence” laid down in the Sino-Indian Treaty of 1954 a la the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed between Germany and Bolshevik Russia in 1917.  When invoking the national tradition of religious pluralism, Nehru credited Buddhism: “Even since the distant past, it has been India’s proud privilege to live in harmony with each other.  That has been the basis of India’s culture.  Long ago, the Buddha taught us this lesson.  From the days of Ashoka, 2300 years ago, this aspect of our thought has been repeatedly declared and practised.”¹³ The omission of Hindu tradition here is obviously unfair: the Buddha, rather than bringing religious pluralism, was himself a beneficiary of a well-established pluralism, which allowed him to preach his doctrine for fifty years and die in old age of natural causes.

The Lion Pillar of the Maurya emperor Ashoka was made into India’s official state emblem and is depicted on Indian currency notes and coins.  The 24-spoked Dharma Chakra in India’s national flag was understood to be a symbol introduced by Ashoka (it also figures on his pillars, between the two lions), known for his patronage of Buddhism and claimed to be a convert to Buddhism.¹⁴ Nehru, on top of presenting the Chakra as a truly representative and truly Indian symbol (as would befit the national flag), explicitly associated it with Ashoka and with the ideology-based policies he stood for:

“That Wheel is a symbol of India’s culture.  It is a symbol of many things that India had stood for through the ages. (…) we have associated with this flag not only this emblem, but in a sense, the name of Ashoka, one of the most magnificent names not only in India’s history, but in the history of the whole world.”¹⁵

Unknown to Nehru, the Chakra was a pre-Ashokan and pre-Buddhist symbol of “uniting the many”, viz. the different autonomous parts of India under one suzerain or “wheel-turner” (chakravarti; the term implied in the Buddhist term dharmachakrapravartana, “setting in motion the wheel of the Dharma”).  So, in spite of Nehru, the centre-space of India’s flag ended up being taken by a truly national rather than a sectarian symbol.  Nehru’s intended imposition of a specific historical model and the concomitant ideological message on a national symbol does amount, at least in principle, to the declaration of a state ideology.  Like Ashoka, who used his throne to preach Dharma, Nehru was guilty of “varna-sankara”, here not in the sense of intermarriage between varnas but in the sense of mixing up the distinct social functions: as rulers, they had no business setting themselves up as preachers, since these are distinct roles best exercised by separate groups of people.

Even in the choice of the official calendar, Nehru managed to impose his Buddhist leanings.  Against the general preference for the widely-used Vikram Samvat (counting from Vikramaditya, 57 BC) or the traditional Kali Yuga (counting from Krishna’s death, 3102 BC), he opted for the Shaka Samvat, supposed to have been instituted by another Buddhist emperor, Kanishka: “Our modern young republic has immortalised him by adopting Saka Era which was started by him in 78 AD when he ascended the throne.”¹⁶ The exact basis of this calendar is actually disputed, and in this case Nehru’s concern was perhaps less pro-Buddhist than simply anti-Hindu.  Shaka Samvat was for him a way to distance himself from the Hindu preference, comparable to his advocacy of Jana Gana Mana over Vande Mataram as national anthem, of English over Hindi as the link language, of “Hindustani” (i.e. Urdu) over proper Hindi, and of Western-Arabic over Sanskritic numerals.

While political speeches and Government-approved schoolbooks in India are full of criticism of “the evils of Hindu society”, there is not one which will offer even the faintest criticism of the Buddha and Buddhism.  In orientalist Western and urban Indian circles, both Hindu and secularist, it is taken for granted that all kinds of things are wrong with Hinduism, but criticizing Buddhism is just not done. it is very hard to find a contemporary book on Buddhism which fails to disparage Hinduism at some point.¹⁷

Except in Christian missionary literature and a single Hindutva pamphlet, any incisive criticism of Buddhism by contemporary authors is truly hard to find.  So, at the level of academic and public discourse, Hinduism finds itself in an uphill battle for the public’s favour with Buddhism, unless it incorporates Buddhism.

10.3. Buddhism as an ally against Islam

Before dealing with the Hindu attitude vis-à-vis Buddhism proper, we should mention a commonality of interest between Hindus and Buddhists vis-à-vis a third party, viz.  Islam.  Three regions are in focus:

1. Bangladesh, where Muslim settlers backed by the Islamic Government took over the lands of Buddhist and other non-Muslim tribes in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, effectively expelling the natives.  Some of these fled to India, while others started an armed resistance movement called Shanti Bahini (“peace squad”), which agreed to dissolve itself under the terms of a peace treaty concluded with the Bangladesh Government in 1997.

2. India’s Northeast, where Buddhist and other non-Muslim tribes are confronted with Muslim illegal immigrants from Bangladesh; the picture is complicated by resentment among non-Muslim natives against the Buddhist refugees from Bangladesh, especially in Arunachal Pradesh.

3. Ladakh, where a shrinking Buddhist majority feels threatened by a growing and assertive Muslim minority, all the more so because nearby Kargil has witnessed exactly the development which Ladakhis fear: through demographics and conversions (esp. of Buddhist brides married into Muslim families); a small immigrant group of Muslims in the 19th century has by now become the majority, and the Buddhist character of the region is but a memory.¹⁸

All three situations are monitored regularly (though certainly not closely, merely giving publicity to reports and resolutions which the affected communities themselves have prepared) by the Hindutva press.  The Buddhist minority in Kargil (in Jammu & Kashmir) shares the long-standing RSS demand that an anti-conversion law be enacted.  The BJP has succeeded in recruiting a number of Ladakh Buddhists into its ranks.¹⁹ After summing up some discriminations imposed by the Muslim state and district authorities on the Buddhists of Kargil, representatives of the Ladakh Buddhist Association complain:

“As if this is not enough, there is a deliberate and organised design to convert Kargil’s Buddhists to Islam.  In the last four years, about 50 girls and married women with children were allured and converted from village Wakha alone.  If this continues unchecked, we fear that Buddhists will be wiped out from Kargil in the next two decades or so.  Anyone objecting to such allurement and conversions is harassed.”²⁰

The most challenging face of Buddhism in India is that of the neo-Buddhist movement initiated by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. However, here too the commonality of Hindu and Buddhist interests in facing Islam is explicit, at least in Dr. Ambedkar’s own writings though less so in those of his present-day followers.  Whatever criticism of Hinduism Ambedkar may have formulated, his open rejection of both Christianity and Islam (who assiduously courted him in the hope that he would bring the Scheduled Castes into their fold) has endeared him to Hindu activists.  Ambedkar took a cool and hard look at Islam as a sworn enemy of Hindu society, even while being bitterly critical of the latter.

Dr. Ambedkar was particularly outspoken about the social injustices in Islam, especially in his book Pakistan or the Partition of India (1940).  According to his biographer Dhananjay Keer, “some penetrating and caustic paragraphs were deleted, it is said, at the instance of Ambedkar’s close admirers” for the sake of his own safety; but what remains is still quite radical.²¹ Dr. Ambedkar also rejected Islam because it had destroyed Buddhism in India and other countries.  Many present-day Ambedkarites never tire of quoting his one-liner: “The history of India is nothing but a history of a mortal conflict between Buddhism and Brahmanism.”²² But Dr. Ambedkar has also written: “There can be no doubt that the fall of Buddhism was due to the invasions of the Muslims.”²³

Referring to the Persian word for “idol”, but, derived from Buddha, Dr. Ambedkar observes: “Thus the origin of the word indicates that in the Muslim mind idol worship had come to be identified with the religion of Buddha.  To the Muslims they were one and the same thing.  The mission to break idols thus became the mission to destroy Buddhism.  Islam destroyed Buddhism not only in India but wherever it went.  Bactria, Parthia, Afghanistan, Gandhara and Chinese Turkestan (…) in all these countries Islam destroyed Buddhism.”²⁴

Moreover: “The Muslim invaders sacked the Buddhist universities of Nalanda, Vikramasila, Jagaddala, Odantapuri to name only a few.  They razed to the ground Buddhist monasteries with which the country was studded.  The monks fled away in thousands to Nepal, Tibet and other places outside India. A very large number were killed outright by the Muslim commanders.”²⁵

It is useful to quote Dr. Ambedkar as restating these facts, for the secularists work overtime to deny them.  Thus, Marxist history-rewriter Praful Bidwai claims: “Despotic state power persecuted Buddhists for centuries as brahminical Hinduism held sway in large parts of India.  Buddhism was all but banished from this land and found refuge in Sri Lanka, Tibet, Myanmar, Thailand and eastwards.”²⁶ In fact, Buddhism went to these lands at a time when it was still flourishing in India, so that at the time of the Muslim invasions, the surviving monks fled to those countries because they knew a Buddhist establishment was already in existence there.

Today, Dalit leaders like Bahujan Samaj Party president Kanshi Ram woo the Muslim community.²⁷ Yet, the pro-Islamic orientation which some of them (most staunchly V.T. Rajshekar in his fortnightly Dalit Voice) want to give to the Ambedkarite movement, is not at all in consonance with Dr. Ambedkar’s own view of Islam.²⁸ Many of Dr. Ambedkar’s observations on Islam would now be branded as “Hindu communalist” by the very people who claim his heritage. in fact, the literature of the RSS Parivar offers no counterpart to Ambedkar’s strong language about Islam: he was more openly anti-Islamic than Savarkar, Golwalkar or any Hindutva stalwart who is regularly accused of being just that.  From the Hindu Revivalist point of view, Ambedkar, in writing his incisive criticism of Islam, did the homework which the Hindutva ideologues neglected.

10.4. Swami Dayananda on Buddhism

The one Hindu leader who could always be counted upon to polemicize against rival religions was Arya Samaj founder Swami Dayananda Saraswati.  However, contrary to his refutations of Christianity and Islam, Dayananda’s critique of Buddhism is limited to certain highbrow points of philosophy, and avoids attacks on the morality of the founder or on the humanity of the religion’s historical career.  We forego discussion of the scholastic points on the epistemology and metaphysics of Buddhism.²⁹ We will consider the argument against the far more fundamental Buddhist doctrine of Dukkha (suffering).

Against the cardinal principle of Dukkha, “(all is) suffering”, the first of the Buddha’s “Four Noble Truths”, Dayananda asserts: “Had there been nothing in this world but pain and sorrow, no living soul would have had an inclination for anything in this world; but it is our daily experience that the souls do desire for the objects of this world, hence it cannot be true that in the whole universe there is nothing but pain and sorrow.  If the Buddhists really believe in the above doctrine, why do they attend to the health of their bodies, and for this purpose take food and drink and follow the laws of health and in case of sickness take medicine etc.? (…) If they answer that they certainly do these things but at the same time believe that they lead to misery and pain, it can never be true because the soul takes to what is conducive to its happiness and shuns what entails misery and suffering.  Practice of virtue, acquisition of knowledge and wisdom, association with the good and the like undoubtedly are conducive to man’s happiness.  No wise man can ever assert that these result in pain and sorrow.”³⁰

Our natural experience is indeed that both suffering and happiness exist.  While certain unwise forms of pleasure are pregnant with experiences of pain, it is rather sweeping to include all occasions of happiness in this category.³¹ It is by no means certain that happiness is unreal; at most one could say that all worldly happiness is very unimpressive when compared with the profound happiness of the yogic state of consciousness.

Moreover, asymmetrical models like the Buddhist inclusion of happiness in suffering are liable to being inverted, with the inverted model being just as reasonable: just as all happy moments may be considered spoiled by the concomitant fear of losing that which makes happy, all fleeting moments of suffering are redeemed by the ensuing moments of relief resulting in restored happiness.  This way, one could just as well say that “all is bliss”.  But Dayananda upholds the more commonsensical position, which is that, of course, both happiness and suffering are real.

Though the actual meditation practices taught by Vedantic and Buddhist yogis are not very different, the intellectual constructions which the two traditions have built around the yogic experience are in some ways diametrical opposites.  In Vedanta, the basic vision is positive: the experience of the Self is Reality-Consciousness-Bliss, it is what we have to get into.³² An afterthought could be that compared with this yogic bliss, any external form of happiness is comparatively bleak; but it could also be the realization that the same blissful Self pervades everything.  In Buddhism, the basic vision is negative: life is suffering brought about by the unquenchable thirst of desire; it is what we have to get away from.  Fortunately, an alternative is found in the experience of Nirvana, so all is well that ends well; but the negative starting-point remains the distinctive signature of Buddhist philosophy.

In the Upanishads, the awakening to the Self is the crown of all possible happy experiences, a happiness worth seeking for its own sake.  To the Vedic seers, the worldly experiences are a mixed bag of sorrow and happiness, in which capable people can ensure (through nîti, “policy”, intelligent conduct)³³ that the balance of their lives is on the positive side; but this real measure of worldly happiness should only spur us onwards to a more perfect happiness of enstasis (to use Mircea Eliade’s term)³⁴ in the Self.  This experience is desirable not because it is an escape from worldly suffering, but because it is so terrifically true, a true perception of one’s true Self.

Swami Dayananda could have made his critique of Buddhism more attractive if he had elaborated more on what Buddhism has in common with the positive Vedantic way.  What is in common is after all the most important part, viz. the practice of inner concentration.

An unpleasant suggestion would be that yogic practice was outside Dayananda’s intellectual focus because he himself didn’t practise much.³⁵ This is in general a real problem: monks whose prestige is derived from the assumption that they practice yoga, but who don’t really practise.  As the late Agehananda Bharati, the Austrian Indologist and nominally also a Hindu monk, observed: “Yoga and other esoteric wisdoms are talked about, the monks and the other gurus of the Hindu Renaissance are listened to and quoted, but their votaries do not really meditate.  They talk about meditation.  This also holds for modern monks whose professed job it is to meditate.” The same is true in Buddhism, e.g. in Sri Lanka, the practice of meditation fell into disuse centuries ago, to be replaced by ritualism, scholastic argument and political intrigue.³⁶ This goes far in explaining the petty anti-Hindu sectarianism (including successful incitement to the destruction of Hindu temples) common among the Lankan Buddhist clergy.  It is not the accomplished yogis who indulge in sectarian identity politics.

However, to my knowledge, and judging from the apparent seriousness with which leading lights of the present-day Arya Samaj practise yoga, the suggestion would be unfair in the case of Dayananda.³⁷ The more fitting explanation would probably remind us first of all that even yogic accomplishment does not magically create worldly skills such as intellectual knowledge, not even knowledge pertaining to other spiritual philosophies beside one’s own.  As we shall see, even the Buddha himself can reasonably be suspected of incomplete and inaccurate knowledge of other (viz Upanishadic) philosophies, a matter entirely divorced from his undeniable yogic accomplishment.  Dayananda’s objective was at any rate not to give a full account of rival viewpoints, merely to indicate where they strayed from the Vedic vision as he understood it.

10.5. Incorporating the Buddha

In recent decades, the Buddha has been enshrined as one of the great sages of Hinduism.  This is largely due to the influence of Western tastes, which have promoted the Buddha (supposedly a rationalist and votary of social justice as against Hindu superstition and caste oppression) to the status of India’s major claim to fame.  This influence has operated mainly through two entries to Hindu society: a certain governmental effort springing from Jawaharlal Nehru’s glorification of the Buddha and the pro-Buddhist Emperor Ashoka, and genuine intellectual developments in non-Arya Samaj Hindu Revivalism.

Even the Arya Samaj has been touched by this tendency, and its newer publications have little anti-Buddhist polemic left in them.  Rather, the tendency now is to pick from Buddhism those points which are seemingly in common with the Arya Samaj’s programme.

For example, in the Chapter “Our saints and sages” of an Arya Samaj catechism book, the very first sage discussed is the Buddha.  Most of the text simply narrates the well-known episodes of the 29-year-old Siddharta Gautama discovering the phenomenon of suffering and of the accomplished Buddha dissuading king Bimbisara from conducting a large-scale sacrifice of animals. In the summary of the Buddha’s five “most important teachings”, the fourth one is: “All human beings are equal.  There is no high or low caste.”³⁸ Though it is doubtful that the Buddha cared about social inequality, this anti-caste plank is now routinely attributed to him, and the Arya Samaj follows suit by adopting it into its own longstanding campaign for social equality.

An even sharper contrast between criticism and subsequent glorification of Buddhism is found in the writings of Veer Savarkar, whom we shall get to know as an unforgiving critic of Buddhism.  In a chapter titled “Reverence to Buddha”, Savarkar tones down his attack: “We have while writing this section wounded our own feelings.  So we hasten to add that the few harsh words we had to say in explaining the political necessity that led to the rejection of Buddhism in India should not be understood to mean that we have not a very high opinion of that Church as a whole!  No, no!  I am as humble an admirer and an adorer of that great and holy Sangha, the holiest the world has ever seen, as any of its initiated worshippers.(…) The consciousness that the first great and the most successful attempt to wean man from the brute inherent in him was conceived, launched and carried on from century to century by a galaxy of great teachers, Arhats and Bhikkus who were born in India, who were bred in India and who owned India as the land of their worship, fills us with feelings too deep for words.”³⁹

There is scope for debate about the Hindu or un-Hindu inspiration in the basic doctrines of Buddhism, partly equivalent to the doubts about the exact meaning of the term Hindu.  The fact remains that the Hindu Renaissance starting among English-speaking Hindus in Calcutta resolutely chose to embrace the Buddha and emphasize his Hindu-ness.

The first reason for including Buddhism in Hinduism (and it is an observation which in itself cannot honestly be doubted) is that, after its establishment as a separate sect, Buddhism has continually moved closer to its Puranic or Tantric surroundings.  Tibetan Buddhism, a fairly late offshoot of Indian Mahayana Buddhism, is very close to Hinduism in most respects, starting with its elaborate ritualism.  But in Japanese Buddhism too, we find many practices that are not traditionally Japanese nor Buddhist in the strictest sense, but that have been carried along by Buddhism as a part of its Hindu heritage, e.g. the fire ceremony of the Shingon sect which, like the Vedic sacrifice, is called “feeding the Gods”.⁴⁰

Indeed, Mahayana itself marks a major step back towards Hinduism, not just because of its adoption of externals like the Sanskrit language and devotional rituals to a legion of divine beings, but in its basic spirit: it aims beyond the monk’s individual salvation (the concern of Theravada Buddhism as of Jainism) to universal salvation for all monks, laymen and other beings, thereby restoring the central Hindu value of responsibility for the world.⁴¹

Sir John Woodroffe, a British apologist of Hinduism (as in his book Is India Civilized?), observed: “There are then based on this common foundation three main religions, Brahmanism, Buddhism and Jainism.  Of the second, a great and universal faith, it has been said that, with each fresh acquirement of knowledge, it seems more difficult to separate it from the Hinduism out of which it emerged and into which (in Northern Buddhism) it relapsed.  This is of course not to say that there are no differences between the two, but that they share in certain general and common principles as their base.”⁴²

Even if Buddhism originally constituted a break-away from the established religion in some respects, it was inevitable that it would assimilate much of Hinduism, for the simple reason that it recruited its monks in a Hindu environment: “From the very beginning the Order contained Brahmins who might have renounced caste but retained their intellectual traditions.  The current Brahmin ideology (not ritual or cults) was often taken for granted, just as the Brahmins had given up beef-eating and accepted non-killing (ahimsâ) as their main philosophy.  The higher philosophies of both Buddhist and Brahmin began to converge in essence.”⁴³

The replacement of Pali with Sanskrit as the language of Mahayana Buddhism is an excellent illustration of this tendency.  Most Buddhist philosophers (e.g. Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, Asanga, Ashvaghosha) were born Brahmins.

With that, we have only admitted that Buddhism has been influenced by Hinduism.  The fact that Buddhism moved closer to Hinduism does not prove that Buddhism itself is essentially Hindu, rather the opposite: if it could move closer, it was because its basic position was substantially different from Hinduism.  If it is merely a question of influence, then the Buddhists might choose to emphasize the separate identity of Buddhism by “purifying Buddhism of its Hindu accretions” in a kind of Buddhist Tabligh campaign.⁴⁴

This way, a Hindu effort to win Buddhists over to a recognition of the basic Hindu character of Buddhism would be hurt rather than helped by highlighting the influence which Hinduism has exerted on later Buddhism.  The intellectually and strategically more important question is therefore whether there is a fundamental doctrinal kinship between Hinduism and Buddhism, not one of external influence but one inherent in the Buddha’s own teachings, so that Buddhism can be described as merely one branch of Hinduism.

The question is definitely answered in the affirmative by most anglicized Hindus in the 20th century.  Speaking to a largely Buddhist audience, Mahatma Gandhi declared that “the essential part of the teachings of Buddha now forms an integral part of Hinduism. (…) It is my fixed opinion that the teaching of Buddha found its full fruition in India, and it could not be otherwise, for Gautama was himself a Hindu of Hindus.  He was saturated with the best that was in Hinduism, and he gave life to some of the teachings that were buried in the Vedas and which were overgrown with weeds. (…) Buddha never rejected Hinduism, but he broadened its base.  He gave it a new life and a new interpretation.”⁴⁵

However, the first sentence could be interpreted as contradicting the rest, for it seems to be saying that Hinduism has incorporated Buddhist doctrine as if it was imported from outside.  Another problem is that Gandhi had a theistic conception of Hinduism, which constitutes a fundamental difference with agnostic Buddhism.

In the same vein, Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, President of India and a typical Congress Brahmin, has written: “Buddhism is only a later phase of the general movement of thought of which the Upanishads were earlier [expressions].  Buddha did not look upon himself as an innovator, but only a restorer of the way of the Upanishads.”⁴⁶ This may be more defensible, in that Upanishadic philosophy, like Buddhism and unlike Gandhi’s Vaishnavism, is not theocentric.

An oft-quoted Orientalist support for this position was given by Dr. T.W. Rhys-Davids, who had conformed to the modern interpretation of Buddhism as original and subversive, yet had observed: “We should never forget that Gautama was born and brought up a Hindu and lived and died a Hindu.  His teaching, far-reaching and original as it was, and really subversive of the religion of the day, was Indian throughout He was the greatest and wisest and best of the Hindus.”⁴⁷

On the occasion of the celebration of the 2500th anniversary of the Buddha’s enlightenment (disregarding the uncertainty among historians about the Buddha’s dates)⁴⁸, and coinciding with the mass-conversion of Mahar Untouchables to Buddhism led by Dr. Ambedkar, Prof. V.S. Jha, Vice-Chancellor of Benares Hindu University, wrote the preface to the book Buddhism and Hinduism by Gurusevak Upadhyaya, “who reminds Hindu readers, in particular, of the Brahmanical roots of Buddhism on the one hand and its impact on the shaping of Hinduism throughout the centuries, on the other”.  The BHU Vice-Chancellor gave as his own judgment that “the essential message of the Buddha constitutes not a ‘different’ religion but forms an integral part of Hinduism itself, supplying to it the dynamism needed for continuous self-criticism and self-purification”.⁴⁹

Leading spokesmen of Buddhism may complete our parade of witnesses to the essential unity of Hinduism and Buddhism.  The Dalai Lama has said: “When I say that Buddhism is a part of Hinduism, certain people criticize me.  But if I were to say that Hinduism and Buddhism are totally different, it would not be in conformity with truth.”⁵⁰ it is no coincidence that the Dalai Lama has attended a number of Sangh Parivar events, e.g. the VHP’s second World Hindu Conference in Allahabad in 1979.⁵¹

Likewise, the 5th European Hindu Conference in Frankfurt featured a speech by Bhikkhu Jnana Jagat, Buddhist member of the Bodh Gaya temple management committee and of the VHP.  He presented the standard VHP viewpoint on Buddhism, viz. that “from time immemorial the ‘Vedic culture’ and ‘Shramana (ascetic) culture’ have been growing and flourishing simultaneously in this land.  Both being the integral part of the same Aryan culture or way of life have been enriching and sustaining each other through centuries.”⁵² It is all a bit vague, but hard to refute.

10.6. Vivekananda on the Buddha

In contrast with the Arya Samaj’s rather bitter criticism of Buddhism, the trend among urban, vaguely anglicized Hindus throughout the 20th century is to glorify the Buddha without measure, and to consider Buddhism a branch of Hinduism with which Hindus have no quarrel.  This embracing of Buddhism is strongly present in the Hindutva movement as well.  A trend-setting example was Swami Vivekananda’s fondness of the Buddha as attested by his own most famous speeches and by his associates.

Swami Vivekananda’s close associate Sister Nivedita testifies that Swamiji was a great devotee of the Buddha: “Again and again he would return upon the note of perfect rationality in his hero.  Buddha was to him not only the greatest of Aryans but also ‘the one absolutely sane man’ that the world had ever seen.  How he had refused worship! (…) How vast had been the freedom and humility of the Blessed One!  He attended the banquet of Ambapali, the courtesan.  Knowing that it would kill him, but desiring that his last act should be one of communion with the lowly, he received the food of the pariah, and afterwards sent a courteous message to his host, thanking him for the Great Deliverance.  How calm!  How masculine! (…) He alone was able to free religion entirely from the argument of the supernatural, and yet make it as binding in its force, and as living in its appeal, as it had ever been."⁵³ Sister Nivedita also relates that Swamiji’s first act after taking Sannyas was to "hurry to Bodh Gaya, and sit under the great tree"; and that his last journey, too, had taken him to Bodh Gaya.⁵⁴

Before we move on to some direct quotations from Vivekananda’s own works, we comment on this rendering of his thoughts by his pupil Sister Nivedita, if only because it is entirely representative of the line taken by Swamiji’s organized following, the Ramakrishna Mission.  The first remarkable thing is the superlatives.  Even if we allow for the greater tendency to use exclamation marks and inflated superlatives typical of the age, the fact remains that no Hindu religious teacher, from Rishi Yajnavalkya to Shankaracharya and down to Sant Tulsidas, has ever been lauded in such strong terms by either Swami Vivekananda or any of his pupils.  This unquestioning idealization of the Buddha is entirely typical of modern Hinduism, both in anti-religious circles, where he is hailed as a "rationalist", and in Hindu Renaissance movements such as Vivekananda’s own Ramakrishna Mission and the following of Sri Aurobindo.

The one paragraph which we have just quoted is packed with modern myths or at least fashionable notions about the Buddha.  The Buddha’s "perfect rationality" would probably not he conceded by rationalists when they read about the Buddha’s perception of seductive nymphs (sent by the Gods to distract him) when meditating under the Bodhi Tree, or with his claim of knowing all his previous incarnations.  Still, the point is well taken: it is true and commendable that the Buddha, like Confucius, chose to keep metaphysical speculation outside his discourse, on the pragmatic plea that life is too short for sterile pursuits which distract our attention from those fields of interest where genuine knowledge and liberating action are within man’s reach.

Some of the idealization of the Buddha reported by Sister Nivedita goes beyond what would be acceptable to modern tastes.  Thus, to say that the aged Buddha "knew" that the pork (or the "pig’s meat", meaning the sweet potato normally eaten by pigs) offered to him by the pariah "would kill him", is a typical attribution of omniscience to a Guru; the phenomenon can still be witnessed among contemporary adepts of various Gurus.  It is a dubious honour to die willingly of a perfectly avoidable cause such as food poisoning, merely for the sake of "communion with the lowly". If this were the case (more probably it is a projection of modem social concerns), did the Buddha not apprehend that others present would die along with him from the same cause?  Or did he consider that the normal fate of the "lowly"?  Or should we accept that in his omniscience, he had foreseen the effect of this food on every other participant in the meal as well?  At any rate, all this supernatural omniscience seems to be in contradiction with Sister Nivedita’s next claim, which is in the modernist mode again: that he "was able to free religion entirely from the argument of the supernatural".

Sister Nivedita’s rendering of Swami Vivekananda’s position is only sketchy, but so is the understanding of Vivekananda by the millions of Hindus who consider him to be one of the greatest exponents of Hinduism.  No wonder, then, that the words of praise to the Buddha just quoted are now the commonplace view of the Buddha among urban Hindus whose convictions are strongly influenced by modem Gurus like Vivekananda.

10.7. Sages of old eclipsed by the Buddha

A point only raised in passing by Vivekananda, but quite fundamental to an understanding of the position of Buddhism vis-à-vis Hinduism, concerns the centrality of the Buddha’s person.  That the Buddha "refused worship"⁵⁵ sounds good to us anti-authoritarian moderns, but it is hardly unique, and presenting it as unique is unfair to Hindu tradition.  In pre-Buddhist scripture, we find very little "worship" of human religious figures, e.g. we never find Rama "worshipping" his Guru Vasishtha.  Fact is that the focusing of a religious tradition in a single person (who was subsequently deified, with the Gods as his servants) is not attested in Vedic literature, which is apaurusheya, "impersonal", part of a hoary tradition not attributed to any single individual.  Symbols of the Vedic religion include fire, the starry sky, the Aum sound, the swastika, but not any individual; by contrast, the central symbol of Buddhism is the Buddha.

Buddhism is, in spite of its claims to universalism and rationality, a pioneer of the paurusheya, "person-centred" traditions; in this respect, it is a forerunner of Christianity, which deifies Jesus, and of Islam, where Mohammed as the mard-i-kâmil (Persian-Urdu: "accomplished man", model man) eclipses the entire earlier history of his people (denounced as jâhilîya, "age of ignorance"). in fact, Buddhism does one better, for while Christianity and Islam still present their own divinely revealed messages against the background of the tradition of Biblical prophets, Buddhist scriptures carry practically no references to the Vedic or any other preexisting traditions, except negative ones.  Their world starts with the Buddha’s awakening and his dharma-chakra-pravartana ("setting in motion the wheel of Buddhism"), and what little of earlier history Buddhists admit into their intellectual horizon (e.g. the stories of the Buddha’s previous lives) serves exclusively as prefiguration or preparation of these strictly Buddhist events.

It is quite possible that the followers have done injustice to the Buddha by worshipping him, that they have disobeyed him by making him the exclusive horizon of their religious consciousness.  At that point, we are faced with limitations of historical knowledge similar to those surrounding the genesis of Christianity (did Jesus intend to found a new religion separate from Judaism?), and there is no point in making unverifiable claims about "what the Buddha really said". In the eyes of his followers at any rate, Siddhartha Gautama, more thoroughly than Jesus and Mohammed, eclipsed all sources of inspiration anterior to his own mission.⁵⁶

In all three cases, the doctrines and ethics (in the case of Islam even the civil law system) by which their followers live are entirely linked with the founders, whether historically springing from them and their immediate associates or unhistorically attributed to them by later authorities.  This is not to deny that the positions of the Buddha, the Christ and the Prophet are different ones within their respective traditions, merely to draw attention to the near-monopoly of these three individuals on the ethical and spiritual horizons of their followers, an individual monopoly quite without parallel in the Vedic or in the ancient Greek religion.  It is only in post-Buddhist Hinduism that historical figures (or even metahistorical Gods) acquire a remotely similar monopoly, e.g. the pre-Buddhist characters Rama and Krishna only become objects of worship in the post-Buddha period if we accept the modern dating of Ramayana and Mahabharata which presents both Rama and Krishna as Avataras of Vishnu.

On the other hand, the worship of the Buddha admits of a different interpretation, in keeping with the Hindu tradition of Gurudom.⁵⁷ "Guru worship" is usually disparaged as the ultimate in idol worship and cultism, but informed Hindus reject this criticism.  The Guru is venerated in his impersonal capacity as an embodiment of the realized Self; it is not the person but the universal Brahman which is venerated through him.  Likewise, the Buddha who is venerated is not the individual Siddhartha Gautama, but the "Buddha nature" which Gautama, like other Awakened individuals before and after him, had realized.

Guru worship is expressive of that which, in the Hindu view, makes Hinduism superior to other religions: its tradition of techniques which make the "realization" of the Brahman in an individual possible.  Most religions simply do not have ways to achieve this, do consequently not have enlightened masters through whom one can venerate the living Brahman; they can only talk about the divine but not bring it alive in a human being.  All this, of course, on the Hindu-Buddhist assumption that what yoga achieves is not just some "funny feeling"⁵⁸ but a state of consciousness which really is radically superior to the ordinary.  If this state of consciousness is indeed venerable, it is normal that lesser mortals, in preparation of their own ascension to this state (in this or a future life) venerate it through individuals who have realized it.

There is nothing exclusive about this "Guru worship": it is agreed that the Absolute Consciousness or Brahman is present in everyone, in the pupil or worshipper and in all sentient beings as well as in the Guru, and that it has been "realized" by numerous masters.  At this point, however, the difference between Hinduism and.  Buddhism resurfaces.  Hindus may hold it against the Buddha that he disturbed the world order by focusing exclusively on the "liberation from suffering" through meditation (implicitly disparaging the validity of all non-spiritual pursuits), but very few Hindus would deny the Buddha’s genuine yogic realization and hence his rightful place in the pantheon of genuine Gurus.  By contrast, judging from Buddhist scripture and from modern Buddhist publications, Buddhists whose horizon of realized spiritual masters includes non-Buddhist sages are rare.⁵⁹

The Hindu pantheon of sages is open-ended, and Hindu claims about the genuine self-realization of this or that particular Guru imply absolutely no denial of the spiritual merits of any other sage, whether Hindu or non-Hindu.⁶⁰ This may be true in theory for Buddhists as well, but in practice, Buddhists are less open to any input from outside their own tradition, less explicit in acknowledging the validity of other paths. in the Hindu endeavour of seeking and verifying any common ground between Hinduism and Buddhism, theory may be more important than practice: the Buddhist practice of isolating the Buddha from his historical context, viz. the Hindu institution of Gurudom, may simply be a temporary historical development which can be reversed by a closer study of the philosophical basis of Buddhism.  It seems that in this respect, Hindu-Buddhist unity is a theoretically arguable proposition, but the de facto state of affairs suggests a more separate identity for Buddhism.

10.8. Vivekananda on Buddhist non-theism

A closer reading of Vivekananda merely confirms his veneration for the Buddha and his agreement with the Buddhist rejection of dualist theism.  About the latter point, his Buddhist contemporaries themselves were not all in agreement, and Vivekananda’s view that the Buddha was an “agnostic" was criticized by his friend Dharmapala (of the Lanka-based Buddhist missionary organization, the Maha Bodhi Society, founded in 1891 and closely linked with the Theosophy movement), whom he is said to have helped with his speech at the Parliament of Religions.  The two got estranged and by 1897 they were accusing each other of "undue malice".  While Vivekananda remained a Buddha fan, the Maha Bodhi Society turned anti-Hindu and even rewrote its version of Buddhist history to minimize the role of Islam and maximize the role of Hinduism in the elimination of Buddhism from India.⁶¹

Regardless of his personal relations with Buddhists, Vivekananda explicitly goes along with what he understands to be the Buddhist argument against the reliance on a personal God: "Ay, the Buddhists say that ninety per cent of these vices that you see in every society are on account of this idea of a personal God; this is an awful idea of the human being that the end and aim of this expression of life, this wonderful expression of life, is to become like a dog.  Says the Buddhist to the Vaishnava, ‘If your ideal, your aim and goal is to go to the place called Vaikuntha where God lives, and there stand before Him with folded hands all through eternity, it is better to commit suicide than do that.’ (…) I am putting these ideas before you as a Buddhist just for the time being, because nowadays all these Advaitic ideas are said to make you immoral, and I am trying to tell you how the other side looks.”⁶²

In this case, the claimed Buddhist objection against the theistic goal of eternally being with God in Heaven is also the Advaitic objection: both Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta aim for total emancipation from the relative and fleeting world, and refuse to settle for a lesser goal such as being "with" (i.e. still separate from) the Divine.  It must be admitted that the vast majority of Hindus have no conception of spiritual achievement beyond being "with" their chosen deity.  The same is true for popular devotional Buddhism, where the agnostic yogic radicalism is replaced with reliance on quasi-deities (Amitabha, Guan Yin, etc.). Here again, what may superficially seem as a contrast between Hinduism and Buddhism is in fact an internal contrast within both Buddhism and Hinduism, viz. between radical philosophies of liberation and popular devotional attitudes.

Vivekananda also reiterates the atheist argument against the doctrine of Creation by a divine Person: "We have seen first of all that this cannot be proved, this idea of a Personal God creating the world; is there any child that can believe this today?  Because a Kumbhakara creates a Ghata, therefore a God created the world!"⁶³ In other words: from the fact that all phenomena within the cosmos have been caused or created, it doesn’t follow that the cosmos as a whole was likewise caused or created by an external agent.

This atheist skepticism forms a bridge between ancient non-theist philosophy and modern rationalism: "Has ever your Personal God, the Creator of the world, to whom you cry all your life, helped you?-is the next challenge from modem science." And back to ancient non-theism: "And we have seen that along with this idea of a Personal God comes tyranny and priestcraft.  Tyranny and priestcraft have prevailed wherever this idea existed, and until the lie is knocked on the head, say the Buddhists, tyranny will not cease.”⁶⁴ Here, Vivekananda fulfils his self-appointed role as herald of modernity and of the implicit modernity avant la lettre (universalism, non-theism, rejection of irrational belief) of ancient philosophies including Vedanta and Buddhism.

Few modern Hindus follow Vivekananda in this radical rejection of theism: usually they snake a superficial compromise between their families’ traditional theistic beliefs and veneration for non-theistic thinkers including the Buddha, without thinking through the inherent contradiction.  Thus, we can see Gandhiji’s inclusion of Buddhism in Hinduism (as he understood it: Vaishnava theism) falters on this point:

"I have heard it contended that Buddha did not believe in God.  In my humble opinion such a belief contradicts the very central fact of Buddha’s teaching.  He undoubtedly rejected the notion that a being called God was actuated by malice and like the kings of the earth could possibly be open to temptations and bribes (animal sacrifice) and could possibly have favourites.  He emphasized and redeclared the eternal and unalterable existence of the moral government of the universe.”⁶⁵

This is an unconvincing way to paper over the stark difference between Gandhi’s own devotional theism and the Buddha’s self-reliant approach which had no place for devotions to or speculative discourse about God.  Though the Buddhist canon seems to take for granted the existence of the Vedic Gods (plural!-monotheism was totally foreign to Buddhism)⁶⁶, they were not accorded any importance whatsoever in the Buddhist spiritual path.  The Buddhist law of Karma, or what Gandhi calls "the moral government of the universe", is conceived as a Natural Law, not as the doing of a Divine Person.

It is true that devotional theism has crept into Buddhism at a later stage, but Gandhi’s claim is not about these later trends but about the Buddha himself.  Gandhi’s approach is quite typical of the rather hurried way in which anglicized Hindus try to dismiss doctrinal differences as peripheral and nonessential, without bothering to offer a proper analysis.  The same superficial approach is in evidence in the Sangh Parivar, which is quite akin to Gandhi in its understanding of Hinduism.

10.9. Coomaraswamy on Hindu-Buddhist unity

When surveying the modern Hindu opinion on Buddhism, we cannot skip the contribution of Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy.  As he stayed aloof from politics and from Hindu activism, we do not want to include him in the Hindutva movement, yet we do choose to include him in this survey for the following reasons.  Firstly, he was definitely an apologist of Hinduism, a defender of Hindu values and traditions (including the caste system) against the numerous misconceptions and prejudices common among the Western and anglicized-Indian audiences.⁶⁷ Secondly, his observations on the sameness and difference of Buddhism and Hinduism are so lucid and accurate, that we do not want to be without them when evaluating the often rather simplistic evaluations of a Vivekananda or a Savarkar.

We need not postpone a judgment on the question whether, or to what extent, Buddhism is part of Hinduism, as it is rather simple to solve; or so, at least, Coomaraswamy teaches us.  For an initial general judgment: "There is no true opposition of Buddhism and Brahmanism, but from the beginning one general movement, or many closely related movements.  The integrity of Indian thought, moreover, would not be broken if every specifically Buddhist element were omitted; we should only have to say that certain details had been less adequately elaborated or less emphasized. (…) [The Buddha] in a majority of fundamentals does not differ from the Atmanists, although he gives a far clearer statement of the law of causality as the essential mark of the world of Becoming.  The greater part of his polemic, however, is wasted in a misunderstanding."⁶⁸ The "misunderstanding" concerns the seeming opposition between the Upanishadic notion of Self (âtman) and the Buddhist doctrine of Non-Self (anatta/anâtman).

Coomaraswamy explains that "the distinction appeared clear enough to Gautama and his successors; but this was largely because the Brahmanism against which they maintained their polemic was after all merely the popular aspect of Brahmanism.  From a study of the Buddha’s dialogues it would appear that he never encountered a capable exponent of the highest Vedantic idealism, such a one as Yajnavalkya or Janaka (…) It appeared to Gautama and his followers then and now that the highest truths-especially the truth embodied by Buddhists in the phrase Anatta-lay rather without than within the Brahmanical circle".⁶⁹ To Coomaraswamy, however, the same truth was present in the Upanishads, "where the truth was held, that the Atman is ‘not so, not so’”.⁷⁰

A misunderstanding arises when people are using the same word but with a different meaning: "At first sight nothing can appear more definite than the opposition of the Buddhist An-atta, ‘no-Atman’, and the Brahman Atman, the sole reality.  But in using the same term, Atta or Atman, Buddhist and Brahman are talking of different things, and when this is realized, it will be seen that the Buddhist disputations on this point lose nearly all their value. (…) There is nothing, then, to show that the Buddhists ever really understood the pure doctrine of the Atman, which is ‘not so, not so’.  The attack which they led upon the idea of soul or self is directed against the conception of the eternity in time of an unchanging individuality; of the timeless spirit they do not speak (…) In reality both sides were in agreement that the soul or ego (mânas, ahamkâra, vijñâna, etc.) is complex and phenomenal, while of that which is ‘not so’ we know nothing.”⁷¹

The Self being pure subject, it cannot be the passive object of knowledge, and in that sense it is unknowable, but in a state of kaivalya ("isolation [of consciousness from its objects]", to use Patanjali’s term) or enstasis, it is subject and object at the same time.  By contrast, any specific functions of consciousness, such as sensorial perception, memory, imagination and ratiocination are-and this is what one comes to realize pretty early in meditation practice-objects of consciousness, arising and passing away, parading before the eye of consciousness like clouds in a windy sky.  All these mental phenomena can be dismissed as fleeting phenomena, but sheer consciousness cannot: it is the sea on which the waves appear as temporary shapes, necessary as the permanent basis to make the momentary waves possible.

The classical Buddhist position that the Self is as temporary and "unreal" as the modifications of its contents (its ever-changing objects), can only be taken by someone who doesn’t know the established meaning of the term "Self”, one who doesn’t know that consciousness itself is the Self, and that it underlies any state of consciousness including Bodhi, the Awakened state.  But, Coomaraswamy observes, there was no dearth of people who had mistaken or non-Upanishadic notions about the Self (equating it with the body, or the brain, or the sense of individual identity, or a transmigrating personality complex called soul), and it is from such people that the Buddha acquired a mistaken understanding of the Self too:

"Either Gautama was only acquainted with popular Brahmanism, or he chose to ignore its higher aspects.  At any rate, those whom he defeats in controversy so easily are mere puppets who never put forward the doctrine of the unconditional Self at all.  Gautama meets no foeman worthy of his steel, and for this reason the greater part of Buddhist polemic is unavoidably occupied in beating the air.  This criticism applies as much to modern as to ancient exposition.”⁷²

The confusion need not be blamed on the followers, but may be traced to the Master himself: "The ‘further shore’ is a symbol of salvation used by both parties; in the Tevijja Sutta Gautama suggests that it is employed by the Brahmans to mean union with Brahma (in the masculine [= as a theistic conception of a Divine Person]), whereas he himself means Arahatta [= Enlightenment]. if he really understood the Atmanist position in this manner, it proves that he spoke without knowledge; if he assumed that this was the Brahman position for the purposes of argument, he was guilty of deliberate dishonesty.  The latter view should not be entertained.  But it is undeniable that Gautama’s dialogue is largely determined by controversial necessity.  The compilers of the Dialogues had to represent the Buddha as victorious in argument, and they succeed by setting up a dummy which it is easy to demolish, while the object of nominal attack, the Atman theory, is never attacked.”⁷³

Coomaraswamy describes the Non-Self doctrine as essentially a knot into which Buddhist debaters got themselves entangled by being too clever: "Gautama constantly accuses others of eel-wrigging, but in the Dialogues he adopts the same method himself. (…) words are interpreted in new senses.  In particular, the word atta (Atman) is used in a different sense from that of the Brahman Atmanists, and thus an easy victory is secured by ‘thinking of something else’.  The coining of the term An-atta to imply the absence of a perduring individuality is a triumph of ingenuity, but it should not blind us to the fact that the perduring Atman of the Brahmans was not an individuality at all.”⁷⁴

Coomaraswamy concedes the greater systemic perfection of Buddhism as compared to the inspired poetry of the Upanishadic seers, but this does not decide the question of who is right and who is wrong: "It may readily be granted that Buddhist thought is far more consistent than the thought of the Upanishads.  The Upanishads are the work of many hands and extend over many centuries; amongst their authors are both poets and philosophers.  The Buddhist Dhamma claims to be the pronouncement of a single rationalist, and to have but one flavour.  Gautama propounds a creed and a system, and it is largely to this fact that the success of his missionary activities was due. (…) No one will assert that the Upanishads exhibit a consistent creed.  But the explanation of their inconsistencies is historical and leaves the truth of their ultimate conclusions quite untouched. (…) we find in point of fact that the essential thought of the Upanishads is never grasped by the Early Buddhists, and, is sometimes but obscurely apprehended by modern exponents."⁷⁵

It is not doubted that the Buddha attained the highest state of consciousness, or what he called Awakening; what is doubted, in fact confidently rejected, is that this state automatically confers other qualities, such as intellectual knowledge about rival philosophies and their jargon.  As Agehananda Bharati wrote: "To be a mystic is one thing; to be perfect in the moral or any other field is quite a different thing; and these perfections are not learned by yoga techniques (…) any more than you learn loving your neighbours by playing poker or cello.”⁷⁶

So, in spite of an intellectual misunderstanding concerning the notion of Self, the substance of the Upanishadic and Buddhist spiritual paths remains essentially the same.  The central point of agreement is the value and discipline of non-attachment:

"Implicit in Brahman thought from an early period (…) and forming the most marked features of later Indian mysticism-achieved also in the Mahayana, but with greater difficulty-is the conviction that ignorance is maintained only by attachment, and not by such actions as are void of purpose and self-reference; and the thought that This and That world, Becoming and Being, are seen to be one by those in whom ignorance is destroyed.  In this identification there is effected a reconciliation of religion with the world, which remained beyond the grasp of Theravada Buddhists.  The distinctions between early Buddhism and Upanishadic Brahmanism, however practically important, are thus merely temperamental; fundamentally there is absolute agreement that bondage consists in the thought of I and Mine, and that this bondage may be broken only for those in whom all craving is extinct.  In all essentials Buddhism and Brahmanism form a single system.”⁷⁷

However, Buddhism is merely a single discipline, whereas Brahminism is conceived as all-encompassing.  Buddhism is exclusively concerned with moksha, whereas Brahmanism has a vision concerning the other goals of life (purushârtha) as well: sensuous enjoyment (kâma), worldly success (artha), and playing one’s part in the larger scheme of things (dharma).  The latter notion means both doing the duties befitting one’s status, qualities and station in life, and participating in the cosmic cycles through ritual (e.g. participating in the year cycle by celebrating the seasonal festivals, a cornerstone of every religion).  There is no Buddhist Dharma-Shastra or Artha-Shastra, much less a Buddhist Kama-Sutra.

Thus, eventhough Buddhist art developed certain typical conventions, these were largely borrowed (e.g. the classic hairdo of Buddha statues was apparently adopted from Bactrian Indo-Greek art)⁷⁸, for there is no specifically Buddhist aesthetics springing from a Buddhist worldview.  If "all is suffering", then beauty too is not worth pursuing, and aesthetics is of no concern to pure Buddhism.

As Coomaraswamy observes: "In comparing Buddhism (the teaching of Gautama, that is) with Brahmanism, we have then to understand and take into account the difference of the problem to be solved.  Gautama is concerned with salvation and nothing but salvation: the Brahmans likewise see in that summum bonum the ultimate significance of all existence, but they also take into account the things of relative importance; theirs is a religion both of Eternity and Time, while Gautama looks upon Eternity alone. it is not really fair to Gautama or to the Brahmans to contrast their Dharma; for they do not seek to cover the same ground.  We must compare the Buddhist ethical ideal with the (identical) standard of Brahmanhood expected of the Brahman born; we must contrast the Buddhist monastic system with the Brahmanical orders; the doctrine of Anatta with the doctrine of Atman, and here we shall find identity. (…) Buddhism stands for a restricted ideal, which contrasts with Brahmanism as a pars contrasts with the whole".⁷⁹

10.10. Coomaraswamy on Hindu-Buddhist differences

Ananda Coomaraswamy concedes that Buddhism developed a more satisfactory systematization of certain Upanishadic ideas than the Upanishads themselves: "Gautama repudiates the two extreme views, that everything is, and that everything is not, and substitutes the thought that there is only a Becoming. (cfr.  Samyutta Nikaya, xxii:90:16) it is due to Gautama to say that the abstract concept of causality as the fundamental principle of the phenomenal world is by him far more firmly grasped and more clearly emphasized than we find it in the early Upanishads; nevertheless the thought and the word ‘Becoming’ are common to both, and both are in agreement that this Becoming is the order of the world, the mark of organic existence, from which Nibbana, or the Brahman (according to their respective phraseology) alone is free.”⁸⁰

In spite of this common view, a difference develops in its practical conclusions: "Where a difference of outlook appears is in the fact that the Buddha is content with this conclusion, and condemns all further speculation as [unedifying]; and thus, like Sankara, he excludes for ever a reconciliation of eternity and time, of religion with the world.”⁸¹

Shankara (ca.  AD 800) was the Vedantin who polemicized against Buddhism but at the same time incorporated a lot of Buddhist thought, so that he is often described as a "crypto-Buddhist".  Like the Buddha, he founded an order of monks vowed to celibacy, the act of world-rejection par excellence, a sin against the Vedic commandment to pay off one’s debt (riha) to the ancestors by raising a family.  In spite of philosophical differences between Shankara and the Buddhists, Shankara did introduce the Buddhist rejection of the world into Hinduism:

"The same result is reached in another way by those Vedantins of the school of Shankara who developed the doctrine of Maya in an absolute sense (Shvetâshvatara Upanishad 4:9-10) to mean the absolute non-entity of the phenomenal world, contrasted with the only reality of the Brahman which alone is.  This is one of the two extreme views rightly repudiated by Gautama, but there is agreement to this extent that both Gautama and the Mayavadins reject the unreal world of Becoming, either because it is inseparable from Evil, or simply because it is unreal.”⁸²

Though Shankara’s influence in medieval and modern Hinduism is enormous, his position is greatly at variance with the Vedic and Upanishadic worldview:

"But the interpretation of the term Maya to signify the absolute nonentity of the phenomenal world, if it belongs to the Vedanta at all (which is to be doubted: the conception of the absolute nonentity of the phenomenal world is entirely contrary to many passages in Brhadârânyaka and Chândogya, as well as to the Brahma Sûtra 1:2, which asserts that ‘Everything is Brahman’ (…)), is comparatively late; and even in the Rigveda (10:90) we find another thought expressed, in which the whole universe is identified with the ‘Eternal Male’ [= Purusha], afterwards a recognized symbol of the Atman.  The same idea finds many expressions in the Upanishads, notably in the saying ‘That art Thou’.”⁸³

This, then, is the proper and original understanding of Upanishadic monism: that the relative and the absolute, the world of form and the formless, the sensorial world and the Brahman, are somehow two states of a single essence, both equally real.  The distinctive Vedic vision, setting it apart from Shankara’s or the Buddha’s view, is that the world itself is also an expression of the Absolute state:

"There is thus asserted from two points of view an irreconcilable opposition of Becoming and Being, Samsâra and Nirvâ?a, This and That.  Over against these extremes there appears another doctrine of the Mean, entirely distinct from that of Gautama which merely asserts that Becoming, and not either Being nor non-Being is the mark of this world.  This other Mean asserts that the Sole Reality, the Brahman, subsists, not merely as non-Becoming, but also as Becoming (…). In truth, there are two forms of Brahman, that is to say-‘The formed and the unformed, the mortal and the immortal, the abiding and the fleeting, the being and the beyond’. (Brhadâranyaka Upanishad 2:3:1) The Brahman is not merely nirguna, ‘in no wise’, but also sarvaguna, ‘in all wise’; and he is saved-attains Nirvana, knows the Brahman-who sees that these are one and the same, that the two worlds are one. (…) Here the phenomenal world is not without significance, but has just so much significance as the degree of our enlightenment allows us to discover in it.”⁸⁴

The similarity with the Mahayana-Buddhist Heart Sutra is more than superficial: "Emptiness is not different from form, form is not different from emptiness.  What is form that is emptiness, what is emptiness that is form.”⁸⁵ Here, Mahayana absorbs the Vedic vision, transcending the Buddhist dualistic view pitting emptiness (Nirvana) against form (equated with suffering).  As in some other respects, Mahayana appears here as a partial return of Buddhism to its Vedic roots.

10.11. Coomaraswamy on Buddhist world-negation

A practical consequence of the respective attitudes to involvement in the world is that Brahmanism values family life as the locus of the continuation of worldly existence, while Buddhism rejects it as merely a factor of more suffering.  Like Saint Paul saying that the married state is but a way out for weak people, definitely inferior to celibacy ("to marry is better than to burn")⁸⁶, Buddhism extols celibate monkhood above the state of the householder, and makes the latter the ancilla of the former, viz. for providing novices and food to the monastic order.  Actually, "the use of the term kulapati (‘head of a family’, householder) for a monk was considered to be an insult.”⁸⁷ So, Coomaraswamy frowns upon this Buddhist value standard, which "is not really a middle path, and (...) remains, in contrasting the bright state of the Wanderer with the dark state of the Householder, if not all morbidly ascetic, nevertheless unmistakably a rule of abstention, rather than moderation.”⁸⁸

Coomaraswamy protests against this fundamental trait of Buddhism: "Gautama hardly contemplates the possibility that freedom may also be attained by those who are still engaged in worldly activities".⁸⁹ The aesthetician Coomaraswamy may understandably not be inclined to world-renunciation, but he ought to consider the possibility that achieving liberation through meditation is a full-time job, one which just happens to be factually incompatible with a worldly career.  The latter may be worthwhile in a relative sense, and Coomaraswamy could certainly wax eloquent about the refined mental states needed for and developed by an artist’s creative activity, but that is just not the same thing as the liberation achieved by silent meditation.

On the other hand, Coomaraswamy acknowledges that the institution of celibate monkhood was by no means a Buddhist innovation; it already formed part of India’s pre-Buddhist religious landscape.  He quotes Hermann Oldenberg to support the view that the Buddhist institution of celibate monkhood, though certainly non-Brahmanical, was already a traditional and well-known institution in the Buddha’s own day: "There was nothing in Buddha’s attitude generally which could be regarded by his contemporaries as unusual, he had not to introduce anything fundamentally new; on the contrary, it would have been an innovation if he had undertaken to preach a way of salvation which did not proceed on a basis of monastic observances."⁹⁰ Such an "innovation" was preached in the Bhagavad-Gita, though on the basis of "the already old doctrine of the identity of This and That, Becoming and not-Becoming.(…) its essential thought is the recognition of Karma Yoga and Bhakti Yoga side by side with Jnana Yoga as ‘means’ of salvation."⁹¹

I venture to doubt that Karma Yoga (work free from attachment to the fruits of the work) and Bhakti Yoga (devotion) can yield the same spiritual results as Jnana Yoga (meditation).  There is not necessarily equality between the different paths acknowledged as legitimate.  On the other hand, the recognition of Karma and Bhakti as spiritual paths strengthens the ethical pluralism typical of Hinduism.  As Coomaraswamy puts it:

"This Religion implies that each individual has to pursue a dharma determined by his station in life.  This is the concept of swa-dharma (own-dharma) emphasized with great vigour in the Bhagavad Gita.  The concept is based on the rejection of an absolutist standard of morality (…): ‘In this conception of own-dharma there appears at once the profound distinction of Hindu from all absolutist moralities, such as the Mosaic or Buddhist.’ The own-dharma is a form of morality appropriate to the individual according to his social and spiritual position.”⁹²

This way, Hinduism contrasts with Buddhism by having room for worldly pursuits along with the spiritual pursuit: "Thus it is that even laymen may attain to perfect freedom, in a life obedient to vocation, if only the activity be void of motive and self-reference.(…) Bondage and deliverance are alike to be found in the home and in the forest, and not more nor less in one than the other; everything alike is Holy (in terms of Buddhism, ‘Void’), and men and women are not less so than mountains or forests.  Above all, this reconciliation of religion with the world is but a Becoming, it has a meaning which cannot be fathomed by those who turn their backs upon it in order to escape from its pains and elude its pleasures.”⁹³

Here, the cleavage is not only between Buddhism and Brahmanism, but runs through Brahmanism itself: "Precisely the same crisis that we here speak of as distinguishing of Brahmanism itself (…) it has been held by Brahmans, as it had been also for a time assumed by Gautama, that salvation must be sought in penance (tapes) and in the life of the hermit.  Gautama introduced no radical change in merely insisting on the futility of carrying such disciplines to a morbid extreme. (Perhaps we ought to say no change at all, for it would be difficult to point to any early or important Brahmanical text advocating a mental and moral discipline more severe than that of the Buddhist Brethren; on the contrary, the Upanishads constantly insist that salvation is won by knowledge alone, and that all else is merely preliminary.)”⁹⁴

The extremism in discipline against which the Buddha reacted is better sought in Jainism, where it is well-attested: Mahavira Jina sought out the most extreme circumstances to live in, and till today Jain sadhus are known for their extreme penances.  The difference between the two sects is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that Buddhists shave off their hairs while Jains pluck them out. Jainism claims to be much older than Buddhism, and unlike the neo-Buddhists, its apologists do not see their religion as a reaction against Brahmanism, but as an entirely original religion equally old as, if not older than the Vedic religion.⁹⁵ Fact is that Shramanism as a broader category predated Buddhism by centuries, and it must have included sects practising a severe asceticism, against which the Buddha reacted by establishing a more moderate path.

The Shramanic tendency was generally characterized by a rejection of the world, certainly of worldly responsibilities.  This, then, certainly sets it apart from the Vedic worldview, with its celebration of worldly joys and its assumption of worldly responsibilities.  Though both doctrines have borrowed from one another, as exemplified most sharply by the case of Shankara, and though they cannot be simply equated with Jainism and Buddhism on the one hand and Hinduism on the other, they certainly remain as two antagonistic poles in India’s religious landscape.

10.12. Aurobindo on Buddhist pessimism

On the philosophical differences between Buddhism and Hinduism, Ananda Coomaraswamy has done the homework which the Hindu thinkers failed to do, or only did in a very sketchy way.  On the other hand, he merely articulated in some detail a view which many Hindus vaguely subscribe to, and which they do not consider worthy of much exploration because it is just so obvious.

One Hindu thinker who gave the matter some thought and expressed himself along the same lines as Coomaraswamy, is Sri Aurobindo.  He blames Buddhism for its negative attitude to the world, and Shankara for importing the same into Hinduism and thereby transforming the Vedic message beyond recognition: "Ancient or pre-Buddhistic Hinduism sought Him both in the world and outside it; it took its stand on the strength and beauty and joy of the Veda, unlike modern or post-Buddhistic Hinduism which is oppressed with Buddha’s sense of universal sorrow and Shankara’s sense of universal illusion,-Shankara who was the better able to destroy Buddhism because he was himself half a Buddhist.”⁹⁶

Because of Shankara’s Mayavadi views, most outsiders identify Hinduism as a "world-denying" religion.  Aurobindo, however, contrasts Shankara-cum-Buddhist asceticism with Vedic life-affirmation.  "The ancient Aryan culture recognised all human possibilities but put this [viz. the spiritual life] highest of all and graded life according to a transitional scale in its system of the four classes and the four orders.  Buddhism first gave an exaggerated and enormous extension to the ascetic ideal and the monastic impulse, erased the transition and upset the balance.  Its victorious system left only two orders, the householder and the ascetic, the monk and the layman, an effect which subsists to the present day.  It is this upsetting of the Dharma for which we find it fiercely attacked in the Vishnu Purana under the veil of an apologue, for it weakened in the end the life of society by its tense exaggeration and its hard system of opposites.”⁹⁷

It is, indeed, often overlooked by modern Hindus claiming Buddhism as part of their own religion that there is a tradition of Hindu (or at least Brahmanic) polemic against Buddhism.  Even the inclusion of the Buddha in the list of Vishnu’s incarnations is not that innocent, as admitted here in one of the better manuals of Hindu doctrine:

"The Buddha is mentioned as one of the ten incarnations in several Puranas including Matsya, Varaha, Padma, Agni and Bhagavata.  The Bhagavata Purana (1:3:24) says: ‘When Kaliyuga sets in, the Lord will be born in Magadha as Buddha, son of Ajana, in order to weaken the enemies of the gods.’ The Agni and Varaha Puranas state that the Lord was born as Mayamoha.  Taking the form of a shaven-headed naked mendicant, the Lord deluded the demons so that they would give up the Vedic rituals and thus became poweriess."⁹⁸

So, his incarnation was only to deceive evil people, to weaken them by teaching them a false doctrine.  The inclusion of the Buddha in the list of incarnations was only a way of rationalizing evil, viz. of explaining the success of a false doctrine as somehow useful in God’s larger scheme.  The falsity of Buddhism does not reside in its yogic aim and method, but in its depreciation of all non-yogic pursuits.

Aurobindo advocates a return to the spirit of pre-Buddhist Hinduism: "Ancient Hinduism aimed socially at our fulfilment in God in life, modem Hinduism at the escape from life to God.  The more modem ideal is fruitful of a noble and ascetic spirituality, but has a chilling and hostile effect on social soundness and development; social life under its shadow stagnates for want of belief and delight, shraddhâ and ânanda. If we are to make our society perfect and the nation is to live again, then we must revert to the earlier and fuller truth.”⁹⁹ He asserts that the genius of Vedic civilization was to see the divine dimension also in the world of form, in lay society, in arts and sciences; and that Buddhism was part of a movement of world-renunciation which over-emphasized the spiritual pursuit to the detriment of these other dimensions.

In defence of Buddhism, then, one could argue that a temporary over-emphasis on the pursuit of Liberation was necessary, simply because there are technical aspects to it which require specialization.  The science of yoga could never have been developed but for the work of people who dropped everything else and totally immersed themselves in this pursuit.  If the belief that the world is nothing but suffering helped them to concentrate on their yoga practice, we could see that as at worst a useful mistake.  And hopefully, the pioneering exploration of yoga by people like the Buddha may lead to the development of more efficient (less life-consuming) methods for achieving the same result.

That is more or less how modern Hindus justify the incorporation of the Buddha: he was a specialist of one discipline, viz. meditation up to the point of Liberation, just as others were specialists of grammar, astronomy, statecraft, temple-building or poetry.  Neither his nor any of the other specialisms exhaust the essence of Hindu civilization, but they have all contributed indispensable elements to it.

10.13. Savarkar on Buddhist defeatism and treason

After these stratospheric philosophical observations, let us now move on to the down-to-earth political comments by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who devoted a few pages of his influential book Hindutva to Buddhism.  Skipping all possible considerations of the Buddha’s spiritual merits, he attacks Buddhism’s lack of martial involvement in society, and its lack of nationalist identification with India.  Shocked by his own candidness, he makes a few genuflections before the Buddha, but then reverts to his negative judgment.

Savarkar announces that he has the answer to a question which historians are still debating today: "We fear that the one telling factor that contributed to the fall of Buddhism more than any other has escaped that detailed attention of scholars which it deserves.”¹⁰⁰ Our curiosity is aroused, and Savarkar assures us that the usual explanations, including "Philosophical differences" and the "inanitation and demoralization of the Buddhistic Church", with Viharas attracting "a loose, lazy and promiscuous crowd of men who lived on others", are insufficient.¹⁰¹ They would have been inconsequential "had not the political consequences of the Buddhistic expansion been so disastrous to the national virility and even the national existence of our race".¹⁰²

So, according to Savarkar, the downfall of Buddhism was due to a healthy reaction against certain morbid political implications of Buddhism.  By implication, he joins hands with those secularists who allege that the downfall of Buddhism was the doing of Hindus rather than Muslims.

Savarkar illustrates the disastrous effect of Buddhism on the polity with an event from the Buddha’s own life: "No prelude to a vast tragedy could be more dramatic in its effect in foreshadowing the culminating catastrophe than that incident in the life of the Shakya Sinha, when the news of the fate of the little tribal republic of the Shakyas was carried to their former Prince when he was just laying the foundation stone of the Buddhistic Church.  He had already enrolled the flower of his clan in his Bhikkhusangha and the little Shakya Republic thus deprived of its bravest and best, fell an easy victim to the strong and warlike in the very lifetime of the Shakya Sinha.  The news when carried to him is said to have left the Enlightened unconcerned."¹⁰³

So far, so good: it is undisputed that the Buddha did not strongly intervene (he made some initial remonstrations but did not insist) to prevent the destruction of his own tribesmen.  These had angered Vidudabha, son of Prasenadi, king of Koshala: because of their caste pride, they had given an illegitimate daughter as a bride to the prince, withholding their legitimate daughters.  But according to Savarkar, this unconcern about one’s tribal or national welfare and sheer survival became the norm when Buddhism won the ruling class over to its own doctrines in most of India.  The result was that "the woeful fate that had overtaken the tribal republic of Kapila Vastu befell the whole of Bharatvarsha itself and it fell an easy prey to the strong and warlike-not like [the] Shakyas to their own kith and kin, but [to] the Lichis and Huns."¹⁰⁴

In effect, Savarkar accuses Buddhism of corrupting Indian culture in two distinct ways: by extolling non-violence, thus making Indians defenceless before more warlike enemies; and by propagating a universalist unconcern with the particularise interests of one’s own family, tribe and nation.  Savarkar contrasts the requirements of nationalism with Buddhist universalism, and claims history as his witness that in the past, Buddhism had already paralysed people’s patriotism to the point of making barbaric invasions possible:

"Thus it was political and national necessity that was at once the cause and the effect of the decline of Buddhism.  Buddhism had its centre of gravity nowhere.  So it was an imperative need to restore at least the national centre of gravity that India had lost in attempting to get identified with Buddhism."¹⁰⁵

To take up Buddhism’s alleged lack of patriotism first, this allegation is truly remarkable.  The kings and soldiers of Buddhist countries like Sri Lanka, Thailand and Myanmar have never lacked in vigour when it came to defending their sovereignty against foreign invaders; witness the centuries of repeated wars between the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka and invading armies from the several Tamil kingdoms.  If the Buddhists had not fought, their states would have ceased to exist long ago.

Conversely, non-Buddhist kings in India are not known to have propagated "patriotism" to the extent of meriting contrastive comparison with the supposed "universalism" of Buddhist rulers.  Most of them were rulers of kingdoms which covered only a small part of India, and the kings they fought were mostly fellow Indians.  Admittedly, a notion of "India" (Bhâratavarsh) as a cultural unit was in the air, but this didn’t keep them from fighting their neighbours, just like European kings were not much hampered in their military pursuits by the awareness that their neighbours belonged to the same Christian religion and cultural space.  At this point, Savarkar is giving the lead in the Hindutva tendency to project modem nationalism onto ancient Indian history.

Savarkar hints at historical events involving Buddhism which would give proof of downright treason: "The reaction against universal tendencies of Buddhism only grew more insistent and powerful as the attempt to re-establish the Buddhist power in India began to assume a more threatening attitude.  Nationalist tendencies refused to barter with our national independence and accept a foreign conqueror as our overlord.  But if that foreigner happened to be favourably inclined towards Buddhism, then he was sure to find some secret sympathisers among the Indian Buddhists all over India, even as Catholic Spain could always find some important section in England to restore a Catholic dynasty in England.  Not only this but dark hints abound in our ancient records to show that at times some foreign Buddhistic powers had actually invaded India with an express national and religious aim in view.”¹⁰⁶

One of these dark hints is explicitated: "We cannot treat the history of this period exhaustively here but can only point to the half symbolic and half actual description given in one of our Puranas of the war waged on the Aryadeshajas by the Nyanapati (the king of the Huns) and his Buddhistic allies.  The record tells us (…) how the Buddhistic forces made China the base of their operations, how they were reinforced by contingents from many Buddhistic nations, and how after a tough fight the Buddhists lost it and paid heavily for their defeat.  They had formally to renounce all ulterior national aims against India and give a pledge that they would never again enter India with any political end in view."¹⁰⁷

It would be wrong to dismiss a testimony simply because it is given in the Puranas, a notorious mixture of fact and fiction.  All the same, the testimony cited by Savarkar is meagre, and the question remains to what extent even genuine facts have not been reinterpreted post factum in terms of the (possibly irrelevant) religious adherence of the parties involved.

In another book, Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History, Savarkar gives other instances of Buddhist treason.  Starting with the well-known fact that the Greco-Bactrian and Kushana invaders adopted Buddhism, he speculates that they thereby attracted the loyalty and collaboration of native Buddhists.  It would have been interesting if he had documented this allegation.

Along the same lines, but with decreasing credibility, he accuses the Buddhists of the same treasonous collaboration with non-Buddhist powers.  He alleges that when Mohammed bin Qasim marched on Sindh in the early 8th century, "these Indian Buddhists were elated to see the Muslim foreigners march against the Hindu kingdom.  These Buddhists, who bore malice towards the Hindus, perhaps thought that these new Muslim aggressors might embrace their Buddhist cult, as did their forerunners, the Greeks under Menander or the Kushans under Kanishka, and establish a Buddhist empire over India.  So they went and greeted the Arabian-Muslim leader when he captured Port Deval from the hands of King Dahir.”¹⁰⁸

Savarkar then imagines what the message they brought to Qasim sounded like: "We have nothing to do with Dahir and his Vedic Hindu cult.  Our religious faith differs very widely from theirs. (…) Never suspect for a moment that we shall even enlist ourselves in King Dahir’s armed forces or help him in any way.  So we pray that the Buddhists should not be subjected to any indignities or troubles at your hands." And Qasim’s reaction to this request "which amounted to complete surrender" was that he "gave them temporary assurance of safety".¹⁰⁹

King Dahir fought but was killed and his army put to flight.  Savarkar asks and answers the question: "But what were the Buddhists doing in this national catastrophe?  At the news of the fall of King Dahir and the victory of the Muslims, these Buddhists began to ring bells in their vihars to greet the Muslim conquerors, and prayed in congregations for the prosperity of the Muslim rulers!"¹¹⁰

The translator, S.T. Godbole, has taken the trouble of authenticating Savarkar’s claims in well-reputed history books.¹¹¹ Though some of these histories and translations are a bit quaint and could do with an update, they may be considered essentially trustworthy.  At any rate, one cannot expect an amateur-historian like Savarkar to improve upon what was an accepted version of the facts among the professional historians of his day.  These sources do give a semblance of confirmation to the allegation of a Buddhist role in acts of capitulation and collaboration, e.g. Al-Baladhuri mentions that "two Samanis, or priests" (apparently Shramanas, Buddhist monks) went all the way to Qasim’s employer Hajjaj "to treat for peace".¹¹² However, the full sentence says that Qasim "went to Nirun, the inhabitants of which had already sent two Samanis, or priests, of their town to Hajjaj to treat for peace", meaning that the “Samanis" were representatives of the general will, not merely of Buddhist interests.

To complicate matters further, the exact meaning of the Arabic rendering of Indian terms is ambiguous, starting with the meaning of budh/budd/but.  As the Buddhists had been the first big producers of ornate sculptures for veneration, viz.  Buddha statues, the word but became the standard Persian term for "idol", so an idol-worshipper was called But-parast, and an idol-breaker But-shikan, even when the idol was not a Buddha statue.  Al-Baladhuri says that "the Indians give in general the name of budd to anything considered with their worship or which forms the object of their veneration.  So, an idol is called budd.”¹¹³ Moreover, Al-Baladhuri also used "Budha" as a toponym: when an emissary of Hajjaj perished in the Indian frontier region, it was claimed that "he was killed by the Jats of Budha".¹¹⁴ Likewise, is anything Buddhist involved when, according to a sub-title in the Chach-Nâmah, "Budhiman comes to Muhammad Kasim, and receives a promise of protection"?¹¹⁵ In the circumstances, is it likely that the freshly arrived Arab chronicler could distinguish a category of "Buddhists" in the general population of Hindus?

Nevertheless, it is the established opinion among modern historians that the Buddhists did commit treason, e.g.: "His [Qasim’sl work was greatly facilitated by the treachery of certain Buddhist priests and renegade chiefs who deserted their sovereign and joined the invader.¹¹⁶ On the other hand, even if specific cases of Buddhist treason can be substantiated, it is not excluded that non-Buddhist citizens were equally eager to be on the best possible terms with the probable victor.  That much is indeed related by the Arabic sources pertaining to the period after the conquest: Hindus coming to Qasim’s court to offer their surrender.¹¹⁷ There is of course a difference between surrendering before the battle is joined and surrendering after the battle is lost; still, the Hindus who surrendered could instead have opted for emigration, civil disobedience, guerrilla warfare or plain martyrdom.

Here again, there is a semantic problem: the "one thousand Brahmans" who came to surrender are described as having "shaven heads and beards" and being "dressed in yellow clothes", the typical look of Shramanas.  At that stage, the Arab-Muslim newcomers simply couldn’t distinguish between Brahmins and Buddhist monks, all But-parasts, "idol-worshippers".

The explicitly religious hostility to the Hindus which Savarkar claims as the Buddhists’ motivation is not in evidence in these sources.  Even if Buddhists committed treason, the reason may have been opportunism and unwillingness to join the fight on any side (draft-dodging, so to speak), without implying any animus against their non-Buddhist compatriots.  Yet, Savarkar puts all his cards on the hypothesis of an intense Hindu-Buddhist antagonism, coinciding with a nationalist-internationalist conflict of loyalties.
Whether historical or not, this view hardly fits in with the usual "Buddhists are Hindus" line of the organized Hindutva movement.  On the contrary, it plays into the hand of a certain anti-Hindutva polemic, which pictures Buddhism as a movement of anti-Hindu revolt then groaning under Hindu oppression, and the Muslim invaders as liberators of those whom the Hindu regime oppressed, including the Buddhists.

One of the trend-setters of this view was M.N. Roy, founder of the Communist Party of India, who wrote: "Brahminical orthodoxy having overwhelmed the Buddhist revolution, India of the eleventh and twelfth centuries must have been infested with multitudes of persecuted heretics who would eagerly welcome the message of Islam.".¹¹⁸ He does nothing to document this sensational claim, but it has become very popular nonetheless.  Along the same lines, the leading Marxist historian Romila Thapar has said: "In an often horrible way, religious forms of expression like Buddhism and Jainism have been persecuted and even exterminated [by Hindus]. (…) The trauma for the Brahmins was that, in the time of the Moghuls, they were counted among ‘the rest’, i.e. the non-Muslims.  Bad for them was also that Islam was more able to have a dialogue with the inheritors of Shramanism.”¹¹⁹

When you consider that the establishment of Islam in the entire area from Iran to Ningxia and from Kazakhstan to Malaysia, including India, was followed by the complete disappearance of living Buddhism in each of these regions, you may wonder what Prof. Thapar’s definition of "dialogue" could be.  Even Moghul Emperor Akbar, who invited representatives of many religions to his court for discussion, did not invite any Buddhist representative simply because Buddhism did not exist in India at that time.  Perhaps Prof. Thapar had the collaboration of the Jain merchants and jewellers with the Sultans in mind.  The Jains, indeed, were better survivors than the Buddhists under Muslim rule.

Whatever the facts of history, Savarkar plays into the hand of the anti-Hindu polemicists by confirming their claim that Buddhism was hostile to Hinduism to the extent of collaborating with the Arab invasion.  Fortunately, there is still some justice in this world, or at least in Savarkar’s world, for the "Buddhist traitors" did not escape their karmic reward: "in spite of their traitorous solicitations of the Muslims, these ‘Buddhaprasthees’-the idol-worshipping Buddhists who preached extreme non-violence-were violently exterminated from Sindh by the Muslim aggressors under Kasim, owing to their innate hatred for that sect.”¹²⁰

Savarkar links Buddhist non-resistance to the destruction of Buddhism: "But what they thus asked for as a boon proved to be an inexorable curse for them.  After winning the final battle, when the Muslims rushed violently, like a stormy wind, through Sindh, they went on beheading these Buddhists even more ruthlessly than they did the Vedic Hindus.  For, the Vedic Hindus were fighting in groups or individually at every place and so they struck at least a little awe and terror in the minds of the Muslims.  But as there was no armed opposition in Buddhist Vihars and Buddhist localities, the Muslims cut them down as easily as they would cut vegetable.  Only those of the Buddhists who took to the Muslim faith were spared".¹²¹

This development is vaguely hinted at in the Arabic sources (to be read with the semantic reservations outlined above), e.g. the Chach-Nâmah reports off-hand: "Muhammad Kasim built at Nirun a mosque on the site of the temple of Budh, and ordered prayers to be proclaimed in the Muhammadan fashion".¹²²

Savarkar generalizes this explanation of the extermination of Buddhism in Sindh to explain its disappearance from India as a whole: "For the same reason and in the very same manner the Muslims went on liquidating the Buddhist pockets of influence as they advanced conquering province after province in India. (…) As most of the Buddhists showed, through fear of death, willingness to embrace Islam, they were all converted.  Not a single Buddhist remained alive in the northwestern provinces like Gandhar, Kamboj and others (…) On seeing Bakhtyar Khiljee march on Bihar, several Buddhists took their religious books and fled to Tibet and China.  The rest were polluted and taken over into the Muslim fold. (…) Nowhere can one find evidence to say that some Indian Buddhist army or some Buddhist organization fought with the Muslim invaders any battle worth the name.”¹²³ The Buddhist establishment at that time consisted exclusively of monasteries, there was no Buddhist king left in India who could have made a distinctively Buddhist contribution to the military defence of India.

10.14. Savarkar on Buddhist non-violence

Veer Savarkar particularly disliked the glorification of non-violence, practised in his own day by Gandhiji, and attributed retrospectively to the Buddha as well:

"Buddhism has conquests to claim but they belong to a world far removed from this our matter-of-fact world, where feet of clay do not stand long and steel could be easily sharpened, and trishna/thirst is too powerful and real to be quenched by painted streams that flow perennially in heaven.  These must have been the considerations that must have driven themselves home to the hearts of our patriots and thinkers when the Huns and Shakas poured like volcanic torrents and burnt all that thrived. (…) So the leaders of thought and action of our race had to rekindle their Sacrificial Fire to oppose the sacrilegious one and to re-open the mines of Vedic fields for steel, to get it sharpened on the altar of Kali, ‘the Terrible’, so that Mahakal, the ‘spirit of the time’, be appeased.  Nor were their anticipations belied.  The success of the renovated Hindu arms was undisputed and indisputable.  Vikramaditya who drove the foreigners from the Indian soil and Lalitaditya who caught and chastised them in their very dens from Tartary to Mongolia were but complements of each other.  Valour had accomplished what formulas had failed to do.”¹²⁴

This is not meant to sound like naked militarism and glorification of armed struggle, so the cultural fruits of this martial spirit are also highlighted: "Once more the people rose to the heights of greatness that shed its lustre on all departments of life.  Poetry and philosophy, art and architecture, agriculture and commerce, thought and action felt the quickening impulse which consciousness of independence, strength and victory alone can radiate.”¹²⁵ This statement would imply that all these disciplines had been in a state of decay during the reign of Ashoka and other Buddhist rulers, a claim which we leave entirely to Savarkar’s responsibility.

Sometimes, this attack on Buddhist non-violence is combined with a bit of polite lip-service to the Buddha: "As long as the law of evolution that lays down the iron command: ‘immobile forces are the easy prey of the mobile ones, those with no teeth fall prey to those with deadly fangs; those without fangs succumb to those with hands, and the cowards to the brave’ (Manu), is too persistent and dangerously imminent to be categorically denied by the law of righteousness whose mottos shine brilliantly and beautifully, but as the stars in the heavens do, so long as the banner of nationality will refuse to be replaced by that of Universality and yet, that very national banner hallowed as it is by the worship of gods and goddesses of our race, would have been the poorer if it could not have counted the Shakyasimha under its fold.”¹²⁶ This, then, represents a fairly common attitude in Hindutva circles: to disparage Buddhism as a corrupting force through its promotion of non-violence, and at the same time praise the Buddha as a spiritual giant.

It is nowadays commonly assumed that the rise of the ideal of non-violence (ahimsâ) in the Indian scale of values is due to the influence of Buddhism.  You find this belief not merely in vulgarizing history books, but also in Veer Savarkar’s seminal book Hindutva, as quoted, and other like-minded publications.  Yet, the doctrine of non-violence definitely precedes Buddhism by centuries.  It is in the Mahabharata that we repeatedly find the famous formula: Ahimsa paramo dharmah, "non-violence is the highest value/norm/duty/religion".¹²⁷ Then already, vegetarianism was a central application of the Ahimsa doctrine: the Mahabharata discusses 18 kings who have banned meat-eating and lists 30 kings who have refrained from taking meat themselves.¹²⁸ In that respect, Buddhism was a step backwards from ahimsa, for the Buddhist monks were allowed to accept meat if it was offered to them.

Centuries before the Buddha, in distant Afghanistan, the Iranian reformer Zarathushtra already preached non-violence (towards people, towards the cow, towards Mother Earth), and in this he was quite possibly only one spokesman of a trend that was catching on in various centres of Aryan culture.¹²⁹ The most extreme form of ahimsa, losing all sense of proportion, was to be found in Jainism, a tradition which by its own account is much older than the Buddha.

To be sure, the ahimsa motive in this trend is more complex than we modems might think.  It is mixed with a new concept of purity: vegetarianism not only avoids killing, it also avoids taking dying substances into your body.  Zarathushtra’s prohibition of animal sacrifice not only avoided killing the animal victim, but also kept the sacred fire pure from the defilement which a dying victim brings.  Ahimsa has a ritual and even a kind of hygienical aspect apart from its ethical aspect of compassion with all sentient beings.  Certain inside observers explain both the ethical and the ritual valuation of ahimsa as a consequence of the spread of yogic practices, which develop people’s sensitivity.¹³⁰

Moving closer to the thought current to which Buddhism is most closely related, we find various notions of ahimsa in the Upanishads.  One scholar mentions "an important but apposite passage in the Brihadâranyakopanishad (5:2:1-3), which uses three debased expressions: dâmyata (have self-control), datta (give), dayadhvam (have compassion).  The foundations for formulating ahimsâ as positive compassion (dayâ) have been laid here.  There are good reasons for believing that this and other Upanishadic texts pre-date Buddha and Mahavira, so that the grounds of their insight have already been laid.”¹³¹

Similarly, the Chhândogya Upanishad mentions ahimsa in several places, one of them being a list of virtues to be practised, including asceticism (tapes), generosity (dânam), uprightness (arjavam) and truth-speaking (satya-vâchanam): these virtues are said to be as necessary for the sacrifice as the fees given to the priests.  Here, we are already close to the Buddha’s "five precepts", one of which is ahimsa.¹³²

The notion of ahimsa has even been traced to the Vedic sacrificers who, all while killing sacrificial animals, tried to do so with a minimum of suffering for the victim and with a specious explanation that this particular form of killing was not really killing.¹³³ Even in the performance of a violent act, the ideal of non-violence was already present.  This unease about committing violence is already recognizable in the custom among primitive hunters to appease the spirit of the animal which they are about to hunt down.  At any rate, it has been argued that the Shramanas "seem to have adopted nonviolence from Brahmanic circles".¹³⁴

The Buddha, a latecomer on the ahimsa scene, prescribed non-violence as one of the rules to which his followers should adhere.  But he did not introduce it in secular affairs, the way Mahatma Gandhi introduced it as a technique of moral and political pressure.  He never said that it was better to get killed than to kill; he simply stayed away from secular situations where killing took place.  It is related several times that a king on his way to the hunting-ground or the battle-field took the occasion to meet the Buddha who was staying on his way to the battlefield at that time, but never did the Buddha admonish him to cancel his programme of violence, though he did preach against animal sacrifice, i.e. against violence in the religious sphere.  Nor did he prescribe strict vegetarianism to his monks, because "beggars can’t be choosers" and have to accept what generous laymen offer them.¹³⁵

On the other hand, "right livelihood", one of the elements of the Noble, Eightfold Path, is definitely an injunction against professions in which the Buddhist rules of conduct are systematically violated.  The permission for monks to accept meat is limited by the requirement that the animal must not have been slaughtered for the specific purpose of offering it to the monk.  On the whole, we can say that the Buddha saw non-violence as a condition for his spiritual path, but not as a new law with which to govern the world; governing the world was a business which he as a prince had abandoned when he took up the search for Liberation.  Moreover, he applied this principle with moderation, unlike the Jain monks who took it to absurd lengths (and even the Jains did not expect their kings to live by the rules of non-violence imposed on the monks). In Buddhist history, we don’t see non-violence interfere with the normal exercise of power.  Buddhist kings have not felt constrained to non-violence when it came to repelling invaders, and some have even waged wars of conquest.

Buddhism started as a Kshatriya religion and in a number of countries it has remained just that.  In China, Buddhist monasteries like Shaolin were famous as centres of martial arts practice, particularly the “hard” variety (the gentler styles being more associated with Taoism).  Bodhidharma, pioneer of Chan/Zen Buddhism, belonged to a martial caste from Kerala and is traditionally credited with bringing the Keralite martial arts to China.¹³⁶ In Japan, the Samurai class found in Zen Buddhism the best psychological basis for a life on the brink of death, a life of total obedience to the master who could send his men into slaughter and suicide missions at any time.¹³⁷ Buddhist non-violence remained an optional discipline for spiritual seekers and seldom interfered with the way of the world.

It is therefore too simplistic, if not simply untruthful, to say that Buddhism robbed India of its fighting capability by imposing an ethic of non-violence.  Even Jainism with its more extreme concept of non-violence has been the adopted religion of kings who were as harsh and aggressive as any.  Rulers were left to practise the duty of the ruler, which could well include the use of force, along with amorous pursuits and other activities not befitting the monk.  In this respect, Buddhism has abided by the Hindu tradition of separate duties and privileges according to station of life and status in society.

10.15. Savarkar on Ashoka

Like the Buddha, Ashoka is exempt from criticism in the official history books.  Savarkar correctly observes that this is an innovation under Western influence: “We know that it could be easily pressed against this statement that the greatest and even the most powerful Indian Kings and Emperors known, belong to the Buddhist period.  Yes, but known to whom?-to Europeans and those of us who have unconsciously imbibed not only their thoughts but even their prejudices.”¹³⁸

Effectively, before Orientalism and English education, most Hindus had never heard of Ashoka.  He does not figure in popular stories as do Vikramaditya or Prithviraj Chauhan.  It is the European glorification of Buddhism and the Christian sympathy for his conversion story (appalled at the slaughter in his own Kalinga war) which introduced Ashoka into the Hindu consciousness.  As usual, Hindutva spokesmen don’t try to beat the dominant school of thought, but readily join it. In this case, Savarkar joins the chorus of praise for Ashoka:

“There was a time when every school history in India opened from the Mohammedan invasion because the average English writers of that time knew next to nothing of our earlier life.  Lately the general knowledge has extended backwards to the rise of Buddhism and we too are apt to look upon it as the first and even the most glorious epoch of our history.  The fact is, it is neither.  We yield to none in our love, admiration and respect for the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha.  They are all ours.  Their glories are ours and ours their failures.  Great was Ashoka, the Devapriya, and greater were the achievements of the Buddhist Bhikkhus.”¹³⁹

The only amendment to the dominant view which Savarkar proposes, is to restore the perspective, viz. of similar non-Buddhist kings in far larger number and of no lesser merit: “But achievements as great if not greater and things as holy and more politic and statesmanly had gone before them and indeed enabled them to be what they were.  So, we do not think that the political virility or the manly nobility of our race began and ended with the Mauryas alone-or was a consequence of their embracing Buddhism.”¹⁴⁰ This is certainly a welcome corrective to Jawaharlal Nehru’s highly selective and partisan vision of Indian history, which exalts Ashoka (along with Akbar) beyond all proportion.

In a later work, Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History, Savarkar has sharpened his criticism of Ashoka.  He blames him for causing a degeneration of the martial qualities of the Indian people, illustrated by their declining capacity to deal with foreign invaders, from Alexander (327 BC) to Demetreos (ca. 200 BC):

“How very strange it is that brave Indian Kshatriyas, their republics, and soldiers and common populace had all defeated and repulsed (…) the aggressive Greeks under Alexander and Seleucos and drove them back, should now be overrun so very easily by the much weaker and degenerated Bactrian Greeks!  Owing to the constant dread of the brave fighting warriors of India, Alexander and Seleucos could not sleep soundly in their military camps But these second-rate Bactrian Greek military leaders could sleep soundly in the royal palace of Ayodhya (…) This Greek invasion took place within thirty to forty years of Asoka’s adoption of Buddhism. (…) the reason why these inferior and weaker Greeks should conquer the Indians so very easily, was (…) that the Indian heroism and the Indian capacity to resist aggression must have deteriorated to a horrible extent.”¹⁴¹

It seems that Ashoka’s policies of non-violence have taken on mythical proportions in the minds of both his fans and his critics.  It is unlikely that “heroism” and “the capacity to resist aggression” in the outlying northwestern provinces could have been affected this badly by the policy of an emperor in distant Pataliputra.  It is not impossible that new research into this epoch of Indian history may discover a grain of truth in Savarkar’s sweeping allegation, but this criticism of Ashoka remains illustrative of Savarkar’s disproportionate focus on martial qualities, obviously related to his own youthful involvement in the armed fringe of the Freedom Movement.
 

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