HISTORY OF BUDDHISM
Buddhist murals: 5th – 8th century AD
Monks and pilgrims play an important part in the practice of Buddhism. Both are attracted to caves in remote places. And the profusion of popular stories in Mahayana Buddhism (on topics such as the adventures of Buddha in his previous lives on earth) provides a rich source of material for narrative paintings on the walls of the caves.
Two places suggest more vividly than any others the vitality of Buddhist cave painting from about the 5th century AD. One is Ajanta, a site in India long forgotten until discovered in 1817. The other is Dunhuang, one of the great oasis staging posts on the Silk Road.
At Ajanta there are about thirty architectural spaces cut into a steep cliff flanking a ravine. Some are viharas, or monasteries, with cells for the monks around a central hall. Others are chaityas, or meeting places, with a small central stupa as an object for worship and contemplation.
The paintings range from calm devotional images of the Buddha to lively and crowded scenes, often featuring the seductively full-breasted and narrow-waisted women more familiar in Indian sculpture than in painting. The latest images are from the 8th century, after which the decline of Buddhism in India causes these remote and beautiful places to become gradually abandoned and then entirely forgotten.
Dunhuang, on one of the world’s greatest trade routes, is an altogether busier place than Ajanta. Rather than thirty caves, Dunhuang has nearly 500 – known collectively as the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas. The murals span three centuries, from the 5th to the 8th AD. The images in the earlier caves (hollowed from the soft rock, as at Ajanta) show the influence of central Asia and even India – the regions from which Buddhism travels on its way to China – but the later paintings are fully Chinese in style.
Dunhuang, unlike Ajanta, is never lost. But one particular cave is sealed against intruders. Rediscovered in 1899, this cave is found to contain fine examples of Chinese painting on silk and the world’s first known printed book.
Printed Buddhist texts in Korea and Japan: AD 750-768
The invention of printing is a striking achievement of Buddhists in east Asia. Korea takes the lead. The world’s earliest known printed document is a sutra printed on a single sheet of paper in Korea in AD 750.
This is closely followed in Japan by a bold experiment in mass circulation (precisely the area in which printed material has the advantage over manuscript). In AD 768, in devoutly Buddhist Nara, the empress commissions a huge edition of a lucky charm or prayer. It is said that the project takes six years to complete and that the number of copies printed, for distribution to pilgrims, is a million. Many have survived.
The first printed book: AD 868
The earliest known printed book is Chinese, from the end of the T’ang dynasty. Discovered in a cave at Dunhuang in 1899, it is a precisely dated document which brings the circumstances of its creation vividly to life.
It is a scroll, 16 feet long and a foot high, formed of sheets of paper glued together at their edges. The text is that of the Diamond Sutra, and the first sheet in the scroll has an added distinction. It is the world’s first printed illustration, depicting an enthroned Buddha surrounded by holy attendants. In a tradition later familiar in religious art of the west, a small figure kneels and prays in the foreground. He is presumably the donor who has paid for this holy book.
The name of the donor, Wang Chieh, is revealed in another device which later becomes traditional in early printed books in the west. The details of publication are given in a colophon (Greek for ‘finishing stroke’) at the end of the text. This reveals that the scroll is a work of Buddhist piety, combined with the filial obligations of good Confucian ideals: ‘Printed on 11 May 868 by Wang Chieh, for free general distribution, in order in deep reverence to perpetuate the memory of his parents.’
The printing of Wang Chieh’s scroll is of a high standard, so it must have had many predecessors. But the lucky accident of the cave at Dunhuang has given his parents a memorial more lasting than he could have imagined possible.
Buddhist banners and scrolls on silk: from the 9th c. AD
The cave discovered in 1899 at Dunhuang contains many Buddhist paintings on silk. The larger ones (mostly showing Buddha seated in paradise with attendant figures) are designed for hanging out on poles on special occasions. Some are almost two yards in height and more than a yard wide.
Narrower vertical images of dramatically painted figures from Buddhist mythology are intended as banners, to be carried in procession with silk streamers attached. Painting on silk remains a central theme of Chinese art. But this flamboyant public use of images, characteristic of Buddhism, subsequently gives way to the more discreet and private art of the Confucians.
New sects of Buddhism in Japan: 12th – 13th century
One of Japan’s most famous monuments is a vast bronze sculpture at Kamakura. Known as Daibutsu, and cast in 1252, it depicts Buddha. But this figure seated in peaceful meditation is not the historical Gautama Buddha. He is Amitabha Buddha, known and revered in Japan as Amida.
The cult of Amida, also called ‘Pure Land’ Buddhism, is one of several new sects in Japan, mostly arriving from China, which become naturalized during the Kamakura shogunate. It is based on a sutra in which Amida, who has achieved enlightenment as Buddha, assures all those who adore him that they can live with him for ever in a pure land – a Promise made in the Sukhavativyuha Sutra.
Another foreign sect of Buddhism, which the Japanese make very much their own, is known in China as Chan and in Japan as Zen (both derive from a Sanskrit word meaning ‘meditation’). Zen, reaching Japan from China in the 12th century, lays great emphasis on intuition, or finding the truth within oneself, but it also stresses the importance of discipline.
It appeals to the new samurai class (several Zen masters teach sword fighting), and at periods during the shogunate it becomes almost the state religion. Zen masters encourage some of the most distinctive cultural aspects of Japanese life, including the Tea Ceremony (closely linked with the tradition of Japanese ceramics).
The most aggressive of the Buddhist sects is the only one to have its roots entirely in Japan. It follows the teaching of Nichiren, a fiery prophet who spends much of his life in exile for his criticism of the shoguns in Kamakura. They favour the rivals on whom he pours scorn, the devotees of Pure Land and Zen Buddhism.
Like Old Testament prophets, Nichiren foresees disaster befalling his misguided compatriots. The Mongol invasion of 1274 is seen by many as the fulfilment of his prophecies. His passion inspires a sect which still has a considerable following in 20th-century Japan.
Buddhism today
Buddhism in its various forms remains the most widespread of the ancient religions in east Asia, where it numbers some 300 million adherents. The greatest concentration is in the historic lands of Theravada Buddhism – Sri Lanka and the three countries, adjacent to each other, of Burma, Thailand and Cambodia. Buddhists still practising in Mahayana regions (China, Tibet, Mongolia) have suffered greatly from the atheist creed of Communism. In Japan a majority still adheres to various forms of Buddhism.
During the 20th century the faith has also begun to spread to entirely new regions. There is now a significant minority of Buddhists in the United States and in Europe.
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