Dharma's Braided Cords in the East
Dharma's imprint in Asia are explored followed by a coda for this series.
Part 3 (i.e. “Ascendant Heterodoxies vs Divisions”) and Part 4 (i.e. “Atrocities vs Power”) highlighted the multiple factors leading to Buddhism losing ground to the ancient millennia-spanning faith better known as Sanatan Dharma (or “Hinduism”) in its birthplace, the Indian Subcontinent. Outside of the Subcontinent, however, both faiths found significant footing into Eastern culture in vividly complex forms.
The True “Middle Kingdom”
As indicated by modern-day Chinese philosopher Hu Shih’s comments in 1936 in Part 1 (i.e. “Dharmic Tapestry Runs Deep in the East”), the masses of China - and its scholars - have long acknowledged the dizzying complexities of Indic scholasticism in its exploration of the metaphysical truth. This was echoed by a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (中国人民政治协商会议), a political advisory body in China, who stated at a cultural conference held in India in 1987 that ruins of Hindu temples were recently discovered in Southeast China, where at least two generations of the pre-Tang Dynasty royalty were raised Hindu, had nicknames like Narayana and Shivadasa (“Lord Vishnu” and “In service of Lord Shiva” respectively) and patronized temples with Hindu priests before going on to conclude that the people in the region worshipped “Shivambu” (another name for Goddess Durga) and that Hinduism still exists in China in the guise of Chinese Buddhism.
In the Mahavira Hall (大雄宝殿) of a typical Chinese Buddhist Temple, fully twenty-one of the Twenty-Four Devas (二十四諸天; “Ershisi Zhutian”) - a group of “Wrathful Gods” (達磨波羅, “dharmapala”) - are Sanatan deities, which include and aren’t limited to: Dazizaitian (大自在天, Lord Shiva), Dafantian (大梵天, Lord Brahma), Dishitian (帝釋天, God-King Indra), Jixiang Tiannu or Gongdetian (吉祥天女 or 功德天, Goddess Lakshmi), Biancaitian (辯才天 or Goddess Saraswati), Ritian or Rigong Tianzi (日天 or 日宮天子, Lord Surya), Yuètian or Yuegong Tianzi (月天 or 月宮天子, Lord Chandra), Weituo Tian or Weituo Pusa (韋馱天 or 韋馱菩薩, Lord Skanda), Jianlao Dishen or Jianláo Ditian (堅牢地神 or 堅牢地天, Goddess Prithvi) and Yanluo Wang or Yanmoluowang (閻羅王 or 閻摩羅王, Lord Yama).
Lord Shiva in particular is writ rather large all over China while his prodigious progeny - and popular Sanatan mass favourite - Lord Ganesha is seen in relatively fewer locations.
The proliferation of deities might not just be because of Buddhism’s borrowed iconography taking on a life and shape of its own in China: the Vedas had made their way into China either early in the Common Era (CE) or a few centuries prior, with China’s scholars to them as “ming-lun” (taken to mean “science of knowledge”) or “zhi-lun” (taken to mean “science of intelligence”). The imagery evoked of the divine in the Vedas might have made a significant enough impression in Chinese scholasticism to ensure that the “Devas” remained resilient across the land. In the modern era, Lin Yutang - deemed one of modern China’s most influential writers - wrote in 1942 that India was China’s teacher in religion and imaginative literature, and the world’s teacher in trigonometry, quadratic equations, grammar, phonetics, Arabian Nights, animal fables, chess as well as philosophy.
In terms of direct impressions, it is now estimated that ties forged between the Chola Empire (which was extant over many parts of Southeast Asia) and the Song Dynasty resulted in the formation of merchants’ enclaves in Quanzhou, which predominantly comprised of members of the powerful Ainnurruvar mercantile guild who established many temples in the region and were reported by European travelers as being a “recognizable presence” in the city. These temples fell into disrepair or were turned into Buddhist temples after the merchants eventually departed (possibly due to war or piracy in the South China Sea making maritime trade impossible).
One well-known repurposed site is the Kaiyuan Temple (开元寺) in Quanzhou. Behind the present temple’s Mahavira Hall are the remains of the original Sanatan temple’s columns as well as a vigraha (“form” or “idol”) of Lord Vishnu built by the merchants.
While the explosive growth of Buddhism in China did bring about occasional bouts of persecution from various dynasties, Chinese scholars typically indicated immense fondness for the Indian Subcontinent and held its contributions to their own culture in high regard. In the Tang Dynasty, Buddhist scholars - virtually all of whom were born in China - began referring to India as “Tianzhu” (天竺; “Heaven”) or even “Wutianzhu” (五天竺) as a means of showing that it comprised of five heavenly regions: Northern, Central, Western, Eastern and Southern.
Leading lights in Chinese intelligentsia had long discussed the idea of “Zhongguo” (中國/中国, “Middle Kingdom”) in reference to their patron Dynasty’s place in the long struggle for Chinese unification. Originally simply signifying the capital city and its surrounding environs, it steadily evolved into the centrality of a dominant unified culture - an idea that distinguished every significant Dynasty in its battles with various tribes and groups in its periphery, thus giving the Tang Dynasty’s battles against the Turkics and the Southern Song Dynasty’s battles against the Mongols a contemporary parallel to the legendary accounts of Huangdi (黃帝, “Yellow Emperor”) of the Yanhuang (炎黃) tribe against Chiyou (蚩尤) of the Nine Li (九黎) tribe.
The Tang Dynasty period, however, witnessed a relatively relaxed attitude to the idea of the “Middle Kingdom”. Daoxuan (道宣) argued that the true center of the world lay in the Indian Subcontinent - specifically, Kapilavastu (迦毘羅, “Jiapiluo”), the birthplace of the Buddha - thus putting to rest the idea that any Dynasty can consider itself a “Middle Kingdom”. He postulated that the better one’s karma in the cycle of rebirths, the closer to India one will be born. His contemporary Xuanzang (玄奘) further enunciated in his work “Great Tang Records on the Western Regions” (大唐西域記, “Da Tang Xīyu Ji”) that Indian Subcontinent can also be called “Yindu” (translatable to “Moon”) to signify the many saints and sages that have risen in the land to guide living beings through the darkness. Yang Xuanzhi (楊衒之) of the Northern Wei Dynasty - author of “Luoyang Jialanji” (洛陽伽藍記, “Record of Buddhist Temples in Luoyang”) and a translator of many Mahayana Buddhist sutras into Chinese - referenced China as the “Eastern Land” (東土, “Dongtu”), while Daoxuan termed the Chinese people the “Eastern Hua” (東華, “Donghua”). Overall, argued these Buddhist scholars (among many others of their time), China lay east of the awakened world.
Daoxuan, in his work “Shijia Fangzhi”( 释迦方志; Gazetteer on Shakyamuni), also argued that China’s preceptor deity Xiwangmu (西王母; “Queen Mother of the West”) is actually a carryover of the Indic Goddess Aditi - who is also a mother goddess - and furnishes cultural evidence to support this. If this were to be true and given that evidence points to Xiwangmu being worshipped in China goes back as early as the 15th century BCE, it would lend support to the idea that the Chinese heartland was also in the “Chain of Dharma” proposed in the previous entry and further deepens the relationship between the two civilizations. However, historical evidence towards this linkage isn’t available as of this moment. Nonetheless, a secondary chain was formed by the notion of the centrality of Indic thought to Chinese cultural evolution in the Tang period. This chain was not meant to last in the course of China’s history.
As Buddhism grew, so did its institutions. While initiates into the monastic order often abandoned economic activity to live on the support of others, Buddhist monasteries and many senior monks often grew extremely wealthy from money-lending, pawnbroking and the usage of slave labour. Wealthy merchants and members of the upper echelons of Chinese society often made donations or willed portions of their estates to Buddhist Orders to receive “merit” (功德, “gong de”; Sanskrit: पुण्य) that would ease their transitions in the cycle of rebirths. This wealth was often utilized by the Order or the monks to generate additional wealth while enjoying tax-exempt status. Monasteries ended up owning mills, orchards, flocks of cattle, inns and so forth - with manual labour done by servants, menial workers and slaves. It was a far cry from the idealized piety and austerity of “Early Buddhism” in the Subcontinent.
The Tang Dynasty, under Emperor Wuzong, finally took action under this economic machine between 841 and 845 CE. In the wake of a victorious but costly war against the Uyghur Khanate, a desire to rid China of “foreign influences” and his own devotion to Daoism, the Emperor’s officials destroyed 4,600 Buddhist temples, 40,000 shrines and forced 260,500 monks to return to lay life. After his death possibly due to the side effects of life-prolonging elixirs he was known to take (or a deliberate poisoning), his successor Emperor Xuanzong reversed the persecution of Buddhists and went on to become a rather capable emperor before also passing away from a similar ingestion of pills.
In the wake of this persecution, however, came the lingering annoyance of Chinese officialdom who continued to regard Buddhism with suspicion. Nearly a century after Emperor Wuzong’s persecution and the eventual ascendance of the Song Dynasty, Chinese Buddhist scholar Zanning (通惠大石) worked to reduce the “foreignness” of Buddhism by re-centering the faith as a Chinese religion that’s required to work in concert with Daoism and Confucianism to support the Emperor, thus making the Emperor the highest authority of the land for whom the three faiths musct act as required. Thus, in the Song dynasty, Chinese scholars finally referenced “Zhongguo” to describe the trans-dynastic entity defined by common ancestry, culture, and language within a set territory.
Nearly a millennium later, Dr. Shih’s 1936 presentation ended on the hope that China will achieve a rapid liberation from the 2,000 years’ cultural domination by India (by which he meant Indian Buddhism). The throngs of laity returning to the Mahavira Halls and shrines across China after the travails of the Cultural Revolution ended and the proliferation of Sanatan Gods into Chinese folk religion as well (i.e. beyond the Mahavira Halls) puts paid to that hope for the foreseeable future at least.
Dharma On the Ocean
In broad terms, both contemporary and latter-day Western Orientalist historians are largely in agreement that Indic influence - in the form of Sanatana and Buddhism - can be mapped as thus in Asia:
Korea’s relationship with Dharma may or may not have been influenced by the “Tributary State” (屬國; shuguo) relationship its nations held with China’s Dynasties and the evolving “Zhongguo” frame of reference therein. While Korea’s indigenous “Shamanistic” religion incorporated elements of Buddhist and even Daoism into itself in centuries of synthesis - thus bringing Indic Gods into Korea as well (as shown in Part 1) - Buddhism entered Korea around the 3rd century CE and enjoyed enduring status in the Three Kingdoms of Korea - Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla. In the subsequent Goryeo period, Buddhism was still considered an official religion of the people despite the inevitable splintering of Buddhism into a number of sects.In this period came the increasing prevalence of Confucianism among Korean officialdom due to the evolving interactions via the “Zhongguo-shuguo” system.
Now, Western scholarship have traditionally considered Korea to be, in effect, a controlled principality of China’s Dynasties because of this system. However, as contemporary historians point out, the system predominantly aimed at harmonizing Korea’s political principles with that of China’s Dynasties to establish common ground. In this aspect, Confucianism essentially became a language of expression for the elites. While Confucians did eventually prevail in limiting the political influence of Buddhist Orders in the subsequent Joseon period and established oversight on the growth in Buddhist scholarship via the “Docheopje” law (도첩제; 度牒制), contemporary research indicates the Korea’s kings neither saw value in wiping out Buddhist beliefs from the masses completely nor did they renounce their own beliefs in totality despite considerable pressure. Confucian ethics, however, was convenient in the administration of law and regulating the conduct of its officialdom. This reinforces the notion that a “Shuguo” wasn’t a vassal in the Western Orientalist sense, had considerable political independence and yet could receive aid during periods of strife - which happened a number of times in the course of Korean history.
It is estimated that Buddhism entered Japan from the Korean kingdom of Baekeje in the 5th century CE, wherein it served to affirm the state’s power and mold the nation into the broader culture of East Asia, which its indigenous “Shinto” faith couldn’t. The “Shinto” faith did organize and codify itself in the “Kojiki” and “Nihon Shoki” three centuries after Buddhism’s advent. However, the masses flowed into both Shinto and Buddhist shrines with largely no perceived incongruity while newer forms of Buddhism continue to flow into Japan and influence the birth of indigenous schools of philosophy as well as lay societies, with the latter remaining extant in Japan even in the present day. In both Korea and Japan, a small but rising number of people have been mentioned in passing references in popular media as adopting Sanatan Dharma in recent times.
When it comes to Malaya (represented in the present day as the nation of Malaysia) and Indonesia, the Dharmic story is a little complicated. Of the two, the one closest to the Subcontinent is Malaya. Archaeological findings, as well as Indian and Chinese accounts, that were perhaps about 30 nations rose and fell in Malaya between the 2nd and 12th century CE. These were generally accepted to have been based on the traditions of the Subcontinent as a result of Indian traders and scholars traversing the region, which led to a synthesis of Sanatan, Mahayana Buddhist and indigenous ideas shaping their political and cultural patterns. The earliest and most long-standing of these Malay kingdoms is estimated to be Kedah in northern Malay Peninsula. Also mentioned is Langkasuka, the location of which confounds historians and archaeologists. There is a growing consensus, however, that it might have been proximate with Kedah.
The histories of Malaya and Indonesia especially intertwine after Kedah become a part of Srivijaya, a vast thalassocracy based out of Sumatra. Culturally, Srivijaya’s roots seems to be in Sanatana and it straddled vital trading routes from the Subcontinent to the East, making it quite wealthy. This route was extensively used by Buddhist students from China travelling to India for their studies. By the 12th century CE, it is estimated that a shift from Sanatana to Tantric Buddhism was fully effected.
Many contemporary historians put forth the notion that the shift out of Indic Dharma - be it Sanatana or Buddhist - is recorded as beginning with the Chola Empire’s invasion of Srivijaya in the period 1025–1030 CE. The Sanatan-Buddhist Khmer Empire (present-day Cambodia) also requested aid against the Srivijaya-backed Malay kingdom of Tambralingam and received it. Subsequently, Chola armadas and troops - certainly no stranger to war - progressively raided and sacked every major city under Srivijaya influence, which culminated in the capture of their Emperor. Chola sources accorded honour to “Ilangasoka” (Langkasuka) as a kingdom “undaunted in fierce battles” but fall it did, as did Kedah and all others.
The Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa (also known as the “Kedah Annuals”), a Malay telling of the history of Kedah estimated to have been written in the 10th-11th century CE, recounts this war as the beginning Malaya’s turn away from Dharma. The King of Kedah, Phra Ong Mahawangsa - also known as “Sri Paduka Maharaja Durbar Raja” - renounced his Indic-derived religious beliefs in the wake of Chola aggression (alleged to have been a conspiracy to favour a rival of his) and adopted Islam, thus becoming the founder of the Kedah Sultanate as Mudzaffar Shah I. As more Malayan kings federated with Kedah, the Malacca Sultanate was born four centuries later. A similar turn of events saw most of Indonesia’s dynasties adopting Islam as well, excluding Bali which remains resolutely Dharmic till the present day.
While Malaysian academia had traditionally considered the “Kedah Annuals” to be largely accurate, historians point out its various inaccuracies and tales of fantastic events to hold that the Annals could be largely inaccurate in the depiction of events. For instance, contemporary evidence indicates that Dharmic-derived beliefs continued to be held in wide favour in Kedah itself for at least a century after the founding of the Malacca Sultanate.
Also puzzling is the war itself: while the Chola Empire didn’t shirk from war in the Subcontinent and fielded a very capable military, it didn’t enter into wars in Southeast Asia. Outside of the Subcontinent, it employed astute diplomacy to maintain its leadership position. Helping these efforts were the Manigramam, Ayyavole and Ainnurruvar - merchant guilds renowned for their daring and intrepidity. Srivijaya even had friendly relations with the Cholas and other leading dynasties in the Subcontinent. Contemporary research indicates that the war could have been spurred by Srivijaya’s attempts to throttle these guilds’ trade - in which the former only received profits as a transhipper and not as an originator - or possibly because the Srivijayan Emperor was considering extending his dominion into the Subcontinent. This might also support why the Cholas forces moved swiftly to batter Srivijayan forces and ransack the treasury, but didn’t establish an administration in the territories it conquered. These actions would prevent any military attempt to force the guilds out or plot designs for the Subcontinent.
Also interesting is the relative rapidity of the turn away from Dharma in Malaya and Indonesia: events in all other Southeast Asian nations indicate a ferocity in response to the notion of religious displacement as witnessed in most of the Subcontinent. Western Orientalist theory or Marxian historiography would likely be wholly unsuitable for theories on this. One theory is that the conversion of the elites in these two countries to the non-Dharmic faith of Islam automatically assumed the subsequent conversion of the masses. This is historically untrue in the Subcontinent. For instance, the Chola Emperors were ardent adherents of the Shaiva tradition within Sanatan Dharma and yet they patronized the Vaishnava tradition by building numerous temples and counted many scholars of that tradition in their courts. They even felicitated Jain scholars in their courts and facilitated the activities of Buddhist monks as they traversed Southeast Asia and beyond and inwards into the Subcontinent. Similarly, the mercantile guilds provided food and material for the needy as part of their social practices regardless of denomination, constructed temples of various traditions principally in the southern half of the Subcontinent and facilitated the construction of temples in Southeast Asia in cooperation with local monarchs. The idea of “top down” conversion - wherein the masses are inducted into the monarch’s beliefs and prior traditions are erased - was alien and inimical to both Indic pluralism and political science.
In the course of my background research, I chanced upon a veritable wealth of information forming a very detailed narrative on these two outliers in the most surprising of places - Reddit! The Redditor who formed the narrative is long-gone from that platform but the sources cited in the narrative are largely from historians bucking against both Western Orientalism and Marxian historiography, largely supportive of contemporary research, and the foundation of an ongoing field of study. This narrative - which I formatted and uploaded on Substack as a means of preservation - can be considered as accompanying articles but I won’t consider them necessarily a part to the “Dharma” series. For one, I didn’t write it; all credit is due to this now-unknown contributor. The narrative is in two parts, follows the Redditors’ convention in the titles and can be found here: “How did Malaysia and Indonesia become majority-Muslim?” and “Addenda”.
An approximate summary of what Dharma means in these two countries can possibly be found in Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a poet who would go on to become India’s Prime Minister - which itself spelt the beginning of the end of dynastic hegemony in independent India’s political fabric - when he recounted two incidents with Indonesia in the course of an impromptu speech made in Pune during an event felicitating well-regarded writer and humorist Purushottam Laxman Deshpande (or simply “Pu La Deshpande”) in 1988. He recounts meeting an Indonesian gentleman of the Muslim faith who inquires about the then-ongoing dispute over the ownership of the legendary birthplace of Lord Prince Ram, the central figure in the “Ramayana” - a treasured text within Sanatana. When Shri Vajpayee summarizes the ongoing dispute for him, the gentleman reacts with surprise and says, “Many of us Indonesians may be Muslims but we haven’t forgotten Lord Prince Ram”. Shri Vajpayee then recounts meeting Indonesia’s Foreign Minister in Bali during the month-long performance of the “Ramayana” in the Balinese tradition. Shri Vajpayee asks him curiously as to what the “Ramayana” means to Indonesians to which the Minister replies: “We have an old relationship with Lord Prince Ram from a time when we weren’t Muslims.”
Note: the reference to Indonesia is from the 4:55 mark onwards. The video is of grainy quality and has no subtitles. A better quality video, albeit interspersed with interludes, is also hosted by the political party Shri Vajpayee was a member of.
In Conclusion
As factual evidence-based chroniclers pursue the truth with the “ethnic” historiography framework, Western Orientalists and Marxians will likely descend into irrelevance as will the schism-seekers who adore them. Later generations of the curious in Asia will likely wonder what on Earth could have compelled some of their past compatriots to have believed in divisions so strongly as to reject the intricate chords from the Subcontinent braided into their culture. Thus, the dialogue of Asia will likely mature, just as it has in the recent years in the Republic of India with regard to the true consideration of Indic identity.
It is a momentous era wherein the axis of the modern world is shifting from the West and towards the East, with Chinese and Indic traditions possibly forming the two ends of the new axis in the popular mindset. In cultural terms, however, these ends aren’t necessarily opposites; they’re waypoints in a millennia-spanning evolution that hasn’t stopped yet.