The Spread of Theravada Buddhism in South India

The Spread of Theravada Buddhism in South India PDF Author: Ven Dr Hindagala Gnanadhara Thero
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781642492149
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
It is surprising that the chronicle Mahavamsa fails to make any reference to the son of Asoka, Arahan Mahinda and Sri Lanka Bhikkus (monks) and Bhikkhunis (nuns), who propagated Buddhism in Tamil Nadu. Scholars like I.K. Sharma and Sathian Nathan Iyar stated that Atahanta Mahinda functioned as the head of Tondamandalam Vihara at Kaveri Pattinam. Reference to the Theravada Buddhist concept paticcasamuppada (causality), four noble truths and Tilakkhana suggest the widely prevalent Theravada Buddhism in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Scholars Srinivasan and Nilakanta Sastri established the birthplace of Buddhagosa, who arrived here in the 5th Century and composed 14 Pali commentaries, at Mahavihara in Anuradhapura, from a village called Moranam in Kanchipuram. Traveller Hiuen Tsang stated that 10000 priests were in 100 monasteries in Tamil Nadu. Thirty-five plates of Buddha statues unearthed there were included in the text. Ilankilli, brother of Kanchipuram Chola king Killivalavam, constructed a Temple with a chetiya (pagoda). Many Chola kings had Buddhist names like Buddhavarman and Asokavarman. They extended their patronage to Buddhism. Vajrabodhi, Bodhidharma and Dhammaruci propagated Buddhism in China, translating the Mayana Buddhist text to Chinese. The text also includes information given by scholars, clergymen and laymen of the 9th century, who were witnesses to the existence of Buddhism in Tamil Nadu.

The Spread of Theravada Buddhism in South India

The Spread of Theravada Buddhism in South India PDF Author: Ven Dr Hindagala Gnanadhara Thero
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781642492149
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 358

Get Book Here

Book Description
It is surprising that the chronicle Mahavamsa fails to make any reference to the son of Asoka, Arahan Mahinda and Sri Lanka Bhikkus (monks) and Bhikkhunis (nuns), who propagated Buddhism in Tamil Nadu. Scholars like I.K. Sharma and Sathian Nathan Iyar stated that Atahanta Mahinda functioned as the head of Tondamandalam Vihara at Kaveri Pattinam. Reference to the Theravada Buddhist concept paticcasamuppada (causality), four noble truths and Tilakkhana suggest the widely prevalent Theravada Buddhism in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Scholars Srinivasan and Nilakanta Sastri established the birthplace of Buddhagosa, who arrived here in the 5th Century and composed 14 Pali commentaries, at Mahavihara in Anuradhapura, from a village called Moranam in Kanchipuram. Traveller Hiuen Tsang stated that 10000 priests were in 100 monasteries in Tamil Nadu. Thirty-five plates of Buddha statues unearthed there were included in the text. Ilankilli, brother of Kanchipuram Chola king Killivalavam, constructed a Temple with a chetiya (pagoda). Many Chola kings had Buddhist names like Buddhavarman and Asokavarman. They extended their patronage to Buddhism. Vajrabodhi, Bodhidharma and Dhammaruci propagated Buddhism in China, translating the Mayana Buddhist text to Chinese. The text also includes information given by scholars, clergymen and laymen of the 9th century, who were witnesses to the existence of Buddhism in Tamil Nadu.

Imagining a Place for Buddhism

Imagining a Place for Buddhism PDF Author: Anne E. Monius
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198032064
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
While Tamil-speaking South India is celebrated for its preservation of Hindu tradition, other religious communities have played a significant role in shaping the region's religious history. Among these non-Hindu communities is that of the Buddhists, who are little-understood because of the scarcity of remnants of Tamil-speaking Buddhist culture. Here, focusing on the two Buddhist texts in Tamil that are complete (a sixth-century poetic narrative and an eleventh-century treatise on grammar and poetics), Monius sheds light on the role of literature and literary culture in the formation, articulation, and evolution of religious identity and community.

South Asian Buddhism

South Asian Buddhism PDF Author: Stephen C. Berkwitz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135689768
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
South Asian Buddhism presents a comprehensive historical survey of the full range of Buddhist traditions throughout South Asia from the beginnings of the religion up to the present. Starting with narratives on the Buddha’s life and foundational teachings from ancient India, the book proceeds to discuss the rise of Buddhist monastic organizations and texts among the early Mainstream Buddhist schools. It considers the origins and development of Mahayana Buddhism in South Asia, surveys the development of Buddhist Tantra in South Asia and outlines developments in Buddhism as found in Sri Lanka and Nepal following the decline of the religion in India. Berkwitz also importantly considers the effects of colonialism and modernity on the revivals of Buddhism across South Asia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. South Asian Buddhism offers a broad, yet detailed perspective on the history, culture, and thought of the various Buddhist traditions that developed in South Asia. Incorporating findings from the latest research on Buddhist texts and culture, this work provides a critical, historically based survey of South Asian Buddhism that will be useful for students, scholars, and general readers.

Buddhism in South India

Buddhism in South India PDF Author: D. C. Ahir
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description


Women and Monastic Buddhism in Early South Asia

Women and Monastic Buddhism in Early South Asia PDF Author: Garima Kaushik
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317329392
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
This book uses gender as a framework to offer unique insights into the socio-cultural foundations of Buddhism. Moving away from dominant discourses that discuss women as a single monolithic, homogenous category—thus rendering them invisible within the broader religious discourse—this monograph examines their sustained role in the larger context of South Asian Buddhism and reaffirms their agency. It highlights the multiple roles played by women as patrons, practitioners, lay and monastic members, etc. within Buddhism. The volume also investigates the individual experiences of the members, and their equations and relationships at different levels—with the Samgha at large, with their own respective Bhikşu or Bhikşunī Sangha, with the laity, and with members of the same gender (both lay and monastic). It rereads, reconfigures and reassesses historical data in order to arrive at a new understanding of Buddhism and the social matrix within which it developed and flourished. Bringing together archaeological, epigraphic, art historical, literary as well as ethnographic data, this volume will be of interest to researchers and scholars of Buddhism, gender studies, ancient Indian history, religion, and South Asian studies.

Buddhist Relic Caskets in South India

Buddhist Relic Caskets in South India PDF Author: B. Subrahmanyam
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
The Present Book Examines The Various Caskets, The Different Kinds Of Material Used For Preparing Them, Their Shapes And Sixes And Finally The Method Of Consecration Followed For Enshrining These Holy Relics. Alongside It Also Provides An Uptodate Account Of Buddhism In South India, The Author, Taking Into Consideration The Archaeological And Literacy Data, Tries To Set At Rest The Conflicting Opinions Held By Scholars Regsrding The Identification Of Dantapura, Photographs, Sketches, Etc., Which Lie Scattered In Various Reports.

Sacred Traces

Sacred Traces PDF Author: Janice Leoshko
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351550306
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
In his novel Kim, in which a Tibetan pilgrim seeks to visit important Buddhist sites in India, Rudyard Kipling reveals the nineteenth-century fascination with the discovery of the importance of Buddhism in India's past. Janice Leoshko, a scholar of South Asian Buddhist art uses Kipling's account and those of other western writers to offer new insight into the priorities underlying nineteenth-century studies of Buddhist art in India. In the absence of written records, the first explorations of Buddhist sites were often guided by accounts of Chinese pilgrims. They had journeyed to India more than a thousand years earlier in search of sacred traces of the Buddha, the places where he lived, obtained enlightenment, taught and finally passed into nirvana. The British explorers, however, had other interests besides the religion itself. They were motivated by concerns tied to the growing British control of the subcontinent. Building on earlier interventions, Janice Leoshko examines this history of nineteenth-century exploration in order to illuminate how early concerns shaped the way Buddhist art has been studied in the West and presented in its museums.

Locations of Buddhism

Locations of Buddhism PDF Author: Anne M. Blackburn
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226055094
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
Modernizing and colonizing forces brought nineteenth-century Sri Lankan Buddhists both challenges and opportunities. How did Buddhists deal with social and economic change; new forms of political, religious, and educational discourse; and Christianity? And how did Sri Lankan Buddhists, collaborating with other Asian Buddhists, respond to colonial rule? To answer these questions, Anne M. Blackburn focuses on the life of leading monk and educator Hikkaduve Sumangala (1827–1911) to examine more broadly Buddhist life under foreign rule. In Locations of Buddhism, Blackburn reveals that during Sri Lanka’s crucial decades of deepening colonial control and modernization, there was a surprising stability in the central religious activities of Hikkaduve and the Buddhists among whom he worked. At the same time, they developed new institutions and forms of association, drawing on pre-colonial intellectual heritage as well as colonial-period technologies and discourse. Advocating a new way of studying the impact of colonialism on colonized societies, Blackburn is particularly attuned here to human experience, paying attention to the habits of thought and modes of affiliation that characterized individuals and smaller scale groups. Locations of Buddhism is a wholly original contribution to the study of Sri Lanka and the history of Buddhism more generally.

Seeking Sakyamuni

Seeking Sakyamuni PDF Author: Richard M. Jaffe
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226391159
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
Though fascinated with the land of their tradition’s birth, virtually no Japanese Buddhists visited the Indian subcontinent before the nineteenth century. In the richly illustrated Seeking Śākyamuni, Richard M. Jaffe reveals the experiences of the first Japanese Buddhists who traveled to South Asia in search of Buddhist knowledge beginning in 1873. Analyzing the impact of these voyages on Japanese conceptions of Buddhism, he argues that South Asia developed into a pivotal nexus for the development of twentieth-century Japanese Buddhism. Jaffe shows that Japan’s growing economic ties to the subcontinent following World War I fostered even more Japanese pilgrimage and study at Buddhism’s foundational sites. Tracking the Japanese travelers who returned home, as well as South Asians who visited Japan, Jaffe describes how the resulting flows of knowledge, personal connections, linguistic expertise, and material artifacts of South and Southeast Asian Buddhism instantiated the growing popular consciousness of Buddhism as a pan-Asian tradition—in the heart of Japan.

Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism

Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism PDF Author: Christian K. Wedemeyer
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231162413
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism fundamentally rethinks the nature of the transgressive theories and practices of the Buddhist Tantric traditions, challenging the notion that the Tantras were “marginal” or primitive and situating them instead—both ideologically and institutionally—within larger trends in mainstream Buddhist and Indian culture. Critically surveying prior scholarship, Wedemeyer exposes the fallacies of attributing Tantric transgression to either the passions of lusty monks, primitive tribal rites, or slavish imitation of Saiva traditions. Through comparative analysis of modern historical narratives—that depict Tantrism as a degenerate form of Buddhism, a primal religious undercurrent, or medieval ritualism—he likewise demonstrates these to be stock patterns in the European historical imagination. Through close analysis of primary sources, Wedemeyer reveals the lived world of Tantric Buddhism as largely continuous with the Indian religious mainstream and deploys contemporary methods of semiotic and structural analysis to make sense of its seemingly repellent and immoral injunctions. Innovative, semiological readings of the influential Guhyasamaja Tantra underscore the text’s overriding concern with purity, pollution, and transcendent insight—issues shared by all Indic religions—and a large-scale, quantitative study of Tantric literature shows its radical antinomianism to be a highly managed ritual observance restricted to a sacerdotal elite. These insights into Tantric scripture and ritual clarify the continuities between South Asian Tantrism and broader currents in Indian religion, illustrating how thoroughly these “radical” communities were integrated into the intellectual, institutional, and social structures of South Asian Buddhism.