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Xuan Zang and the Third Buddha

Posted 3 months ago to Story So Far

 

Does an enormous statue of a reclining Buddha lie buried somewhere

near the ex-feet of the Bamiyan Buddhas? Archaeologist Zemaryali

Tarzi claims to have "50 percent confirmed" its existence. This I

take to mean "er, maybe".

 

 

 

 

Then and now: A gap in a cliff is all that remains of the Bamiyan

Buddhas--as they were in a photo taken in 1997 and again after the

Taliban demolished the them in March, 2001

 

 

 

Still, the belief in the existence of a third Bamiyan Buddha comes

from a very good source: the observant and highly regarded writings

of Xuan Zang, a 7th century Chinese monk who had visited Bamiyan in

630. Xuan Zang described seeing a 200 foot long statue of the Buddha

inside a monastery at Bamiyan which was "reclining on his death bed".

 

 

 

 

 

Xuan Zang undertook the extraordinarily arduous and perilous journey

from China to India to study Buddhism at its source and also to

bring back and translate its sacred canon into the Chinese language.

He achieved both of these goals: after studying at the famous

Buddhist univerisity at Nalanda for there several years he returned

home with more than 600 scriptures and established an institute for

their translation in the imperial capital at Chang'an. His legacy

was the establishment of Buddhism as a highly influential and

enduring strain in Chinese thought as well as the preservation of

many scriptures which have been lost in their original versions.

 

In 629, Xuan Zang set out for India along the Silk Route into

Central Asia, passing through Tashkent, and Samarkand. He reached

Bamiyan the following year before pressing on to Gandhara, the

ancient heartland of Central Asian Buddhism.

 

>From there he entered India proper, travelling through the Punjab,

crossing the Ganges and passing through the topical rainforests of

Southern Nepal to Lumbini, the birthplace of the Buddha. He

travelled to Patna and spent two years studying at the university at

Nalanda before finally returning home to China in 645.

 

 

 

 

 

Xuan Zang preserved in his eye witness accounts many aspects of

ancient India that would have otherwise been lost to history. He

keenly observed and accurately recorded geographical details,

architectural features, cultural practices, local histories and

legends which have since proved to be of immeasurable value to

modern scholars and archaeologists.

 

His writings have led to several discoveries over the years, for

example he described a great stupa, now lost, which had been built

by the Buddhist monarch King Kanishka near his capital at Peshawar

in the second century (note: the name Xuan Zang when rendered in the

older style Wade-Giles romanization is spelt Huan Tsang).

Among all [King Kanishka's] buildings one of his remarkable

structures was his greatest Stupa (a place where the ashes of

Buddhist priests, monks, nobles, etc. are enshrined, and a big

domical structure erected on it, and it became a place of worship

for the Buddhists).

....

 

It is said that Gautama Buddha had predicted that four hundred years

after his death a king would erect a stupa to contain many relics of

the Buddha's bones and flesh. Kanishka had heard this story.

 

One day while hunting a white hare in the forest (Peshawar area), he

met a shepherd boy building a stupa of mud. Fa-hien said that the

shepherd was Indra in disguise. Kanishka ordered to build a stupa on

the spot and enshrined a number of relics of the Buddha in it.

Buddha had also predicted that the stupa would be seven times burnt

down and seven times rebuilt, and the religion itself would

disappear from here (Gandhara).

 

At the time of Huan Tsang's visit, it had been again reduced to

ashes for the fourth time. Both the pious travelers relate the same

legend according to which after the seventh time, the law of the

Buddha would become finally extinct in the country. A Chinese source

said that Kanishka himself placed a ball of clay on the stupa

praying that it might become an image of the Buddha and the image at

once appeared. Huan Tsang had mentioned in his accounts that there

were big images of Buddha on the eastern side of the stupa, some

were painted and some were gold-washed.

 

Xuan Zang described the stupa as having a square-shaped plinth which

was 100 meters wide on each side and decorated with Stucco images of

Buddha. Above this projected a stone tower some 50 meters metres

high and above that a further 100 meters of wood. The tower was

capped with 10 metres of gold-leafed iron finial and was in total

height the equivalent of a modern 13 storey building. This was quite

a remarkable engineering feat and it would have undoubtedly been

considered an architectural marvel in its time. Using Xuan Zang's

account, the foundations of the lost stupa were identified in 1895-

97 by Alfred Foucher and excavated by D. B. Spooner in 1908-09.

 

In another example, Xuan Zang described a pillar at Lumbini in

Nepal. The pillar had been erected by Asok, the great Mauryan

emperor, near the tree which was said to mark the Buddha's

birthplace. This pillar, which was subsequently lost for a millennia

was only rediscovered in 1895, again largely thanks to Xuan Zang's

writings.

 

 

 

 

A collection of legends about Asoka, included in the Divyävadana, a

work composed probably in the 1st or 2nd century A.D., tells us (pp.

389, 390) how Asoka, the Buddhist emperor, visited the traditional

site of this grove, under the guidance of Upagupta. This must have

been about 248 B.C. Upagupta (Tissa: see PALl) himself also mentions

the site in his Kathd Vatihu (p. 559). The Chinese pilgrims, Fa Hien

and Hsuan Tsang, visiting India in the 5th and 7th centuries A.D.,

were shown the site; and the latter (ed. Watters, ii. 15-19)

mentions that he saw there an Asoka pillar, with a horse on the top,

which had been split, when Hsuan Tsang saw it, by lightning. This

pillar was rediscovered under the following circumstances.

 

The existence, a few miles beyond the Nepalese frontier, of an

inscribed pillar had been known for some years when, in 1895, the

discovery of another inscribed pillar at Nigliva, near by, led to

the belief that this other, hitherto neglected, one must also be an

Asoka pillar, and very -probably the one mentioned by Hsuan Tsang.

At the request of the Indian government the Nepalese government had

the pillar, which was half- buried, excavated for examination; and

Dr Führer, then in the employ of the Archaeological Survey, arrived

soon afterwards at the spot.

 

The stone was split into two portions, apparently by lightning, and

was inscribed with Pall characters as used in the time of Asoka.

Squeezes of the inscription were sent to Europe, where various

scholars discussed the meaning, which is as follows:

 

"His Majesty, Piyadassi, came here in the 21st year of his reign and

paid reverence. And on the ground that the Buddha, the Sakiya sage,

was born here, he (the king) had a flawless stone cut, and put up a

pillar. And further, since the Exalted One was born in it, he

reduced taxation in the village of LumbinI, and established the dues

at one-eighth part (of the crop)."

 

Xuan Zang's writings once again proved useful to archaeologists in

identifying the final resting place of the Buddha at Kushinagar.

 

 

 

 

Kushinagar (Kushinara of yore) is a revered place for Buddhist

pilgrims, 55 kms away from Gorakhpur. It was here that the

Tathagata, the reciter of truth, breathed his last with the

words, "Behold now, brethren, I exhort you, saying, decay is

inherent in all component things! Work out your salvation with

diligence!" A temple dedicated to the event - the Mahaparinirvana

temple today stands amidst a serene `sal' grove .... as if still

reminiscing the great demise.

 

The huge statue of the Reclining Buddha, excavated in 1876 at the

temple, is one of the most momentous of all sights for the devout.

It was brought from Mathura by a devout monk, Haribala, during the

reign of King Kumara Gupta in the 5th Century A.D. The whole of

Kushinagar, since the Mahaparinirvana of Gautam Buddha, was turned

into a memorial site with stupas including the relic stupa-

Mukutbadhana and the Chaitayas and Viharas, built by the devout

kings of the Gupta period.

 

The Chinese travellers Fa Hien, Hieun Tsang and T. Ising visited

Kushinagar during different centuries and recorded a graphic account

of the place which later fell to bad times, due to lack of

patronage. These recordings provided the vital clues for excavations

done centuries later by Sir Alexander Cunningham.

 

So, returning once again to Afghanistan, if Xuan Zang said that

there was a reclining Buddha at Bamiyan, I think you can be fairly

sure that there really was one. Unfortunately, another thing that

you can be just as certain of is that the monastery that it once

housed it would have been thoroughly destroyed by the Muslim

iconoclasts that swarmed through Central Asia two hundred years

later.

 

But at least these guys were not the Taliban -- and they didn't have

at their disposal modern explosives or artillery, so some hope

remains that remnants of this "Third Buddha" could still show up

under the spade in an excavation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Incidentally, Xuan Zang became so famous when he returned home to

China that his remarkable journey quickly became the stuff of myth

and legend. 900 years later these folk stories were compiled and

rewritten by a scholar-official named Wu Ch'eng-en in a work that

went on to become one of the most enduring and best loved works of

Chinese literature. In the story, known as a Journey to the West,

Xuan Zang is accompanied in his travels by four celestial creatures:

a monkey, a pig and sea-monster and a dragon (which had transformed

itself into a horse).

Unfortunately for Xuan Zang (also referred to as Tripitaka which is

a pun on his name), his character in the book was reduced to

something of wooden caricature whose main role it seems was to be

constantly upstaged by the antics of Wu-k'ung, the delightfully

mischievous monkey-god.

 

 

 

 

See also:

 

Travels of Hsuan-Tsang

 

Wikipedia on Xuan Zang.

 

Temple of Flourishing Teaching

 

Monkey Madness!!!!

 

 

 

Finally, here's a quiz question:

 

Q: What is the difference between a pagoda and a stupa?

 

A: That's easy, they're all stupas, stupid ;-)

 

The term "pagoda," is a Portuguese imitation of something

misunderstood in India, later adopted by the British. This is not

what such towers are called in the Far East. The terms was

apparently a corruption of either the north Indian term "

bhagavata " (blessed), applied to many deities, or the Persian but

kadah (idol house). The Portuguese, who were the first Europeans in

the Indies, used it for any towered religious shrine, Brahmanical,

Buddhist, or any other. The British took it into English from them.

And pretty much as they took the natural harbor and island location

of Mumbai from them, they took it with the Portuguese corruption of

the local designation. Though they eventually abandoned the term in

India, the British kept the term in East Asia, where they were less

familiar with local traditions.