Relics and Relic Worship in Early Buddhism: India, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Burma
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Relics and Relic Worship in Early Buddhism: India, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Burma Edited by Janice Stargardt and Michael Willis Published with the support of ERC Project No. 609823 Publishers The British Museum Great Russell Street London wc1b 3dg Series editor Sarah Faulks Relics and Relic Worship in Early Buddhism: India, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Burma Edited by Janice Stargardt and Michael Willis isbn 978 086159 218 0 issn 1747 3640 © The Trustees of the British Museum 2018 Text by British Museum contributors © 2018 The Trustees of the British Museum. All other text © 2018 individual contributors as listed on p. iii Front cover: the great silver reliquary from Sri Ksetra as originally made, with three-dimensional tree shrine top. Composite image constructed by Vicki Herring using data provided by Janice Stargardt (see Chapter 7) Printed and bound in the UK by 4edge Ltd, Hockley Papers used by The British Museum are recyclable products made from wood grown in well-managed forests and other controlled sources. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. All British Museum images illustrated in this book are © The Trustees of the British Museum Further information about the British Museum and its collection can be found at britishmuseum.org Introduction 1 Contents Janice Stargardt 1. Relics: The Heart of Buddhist Veneration 4 Peter Skilling 2. Cetiya and Thūpa: The Textual Sources 18 Lance Cousins 3. The Buddhist Remains of Passani and Bimaran 31 and Related Relic Deposits from South-eastern Afghanistan in the Masson Collection of the British Museum Elizabeth Errington 4. The Bimaran Casket: The Problem of Its Date 47 and Significance Joe Cribb 5. Offerings to the Triple Gem: Texts, Inscriptions 66 and Ritual Practice Michael Willis 6. Relics Exposed: Rules and Practices from 74 Art-Historical, Epigraphic and Literary Sources Karel van Kooij 7. The Great Silver Reliquary from Sri Ksetra: 89 Early Buddhist Art Meets Early Pali Inscriptions in the Pyu Culture of Burma (Myanmar) Janice Stargardt Bibliography 106 Contributors 114 Index 115 Much has been made of the fact that, among world religions, Introduction only Buddhism and Christianity attach a central importance to the role of relics. Yet, both conceptually and materially, the two traditions are different. In Buddhism the Janice Stargardt most sacred relics are those considered parts of the cremated remains of the Buddha – a hair, a tooth, a small fragment of bone – or the tiny bead-like relics generated by the Buddha before entering nirvāṇa/nibbāna. In Christianity, such direct relic-embodiment is excluded by the Crucifixion/ Resurrection story, so only objects, or pieces of objects closely associated with Christ, such as the thorns, cross or robe belonged to the first generation of relics, later joined both by bodily relics of the saints and items used by them. This book is the result of a long-running project entitled Relics and Relic Worship in the Early Buddhism of India and Burma. Initially a Research Project of the British Academy (from 2003), it became a Research Project of the British Association for South Asian Studies (until 2010). Annual workshops took place in Cambridge and Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh), complemented by fruitful exchanges among members between meetings. This volume has also benefitted from the financial support of the ERC Synergy Project, ‘Beyond Boundaries: Religion, Region, Language and the State’ (project number 609823), which has provided the services of a sub-editor in the preparation of the volume for publication. Late in 2017, Dr Michael Willis, Principal Investigator of the ERC project became co-editor of the volume, since it has from its origins exemplified the synergy to be found in the study of early Buddhism in different areas of South Asia and Myanmar. He has kindly undertaken the final editorial scrutiny of the volume. The book’s title reflects both the diverse interests of the contributors and the synergy gained from their presence in a single volume. The contributors to this volume are core members of this project, whose expertise has shaped it in the long term. While the volume is indebted to, and responds to, the existing tradition of relics’ scholarship in Buddhist studies in the late 20th and 21st centuries (e.g. in alphabetical order, Baums, Jongeward, Salomon, Schopen, Strong, Subrahmanyam and Trainor1), it also takes the subject into new territories (both metaphorically and literally) that have not previously been published. Readers will notice some diversity of views among contributors on Buddhist topics, including what constitutes a relic. As Editor, I have welcomed this individuality and diversity. Before proceeding to introduce this material, I should like to pay tribute to the enthusiastic contributions of Lance Cousins, who sadly died before publication, but whose chapter appears in this volume. I should also like to acknowledge the contributions to our evolving discussions of some scholars who only participated in one or two of the workshops, but were much appreciated, among them K. Rajan, Alexander Wynne, Julia Shaw, Krishnakumari Myneni, Anna Ślączka and Susan Huntington. Peter Skilling opens the volume with a wide-ranging analysis of what constitutes a relic. He presents a comprehensive review of primary canonical sources, notably of the vocabulary pertaining to relics, and accompanies it with a concurrent critique of the secondary literature. He makes vital distinctions between relics and other objects of Introduction | 1 veneration, such as objects of use (which some regard as were a golden manuscript of 20 leaves of canonical Pali texts, relics) and tree shrines. Lance Cousins takes this discussion preserved in perfectly legible condition, which is probably the of the etymology of words meaning ‘relic’ further, and oldest (and certainly the longest) example of Pali in the world proceeds to explore how the terms cetiya and stūpa, as the in those centuries, and – as the centrepiece of the chamber places where relics were installed, should be understood, – a very large reliquary made of gilded silver bearing while offering a critical response to some of Schopen’s recent important early Buddhist sculptures and significant work. In an Appendix, Cousins presents his selection of inscriptions in Pali and Pyu. The examination of the art and relevant Pali texts. epigraphy of the reliquary opens up perspectives on the areas With Elizabeth Errington’s chapter, we stride into the of India and Sri Lanka involved in the spread of Buddhist broader, and sometimes enigmatic, context within which knowledge to Burma (Myanmar), demolishes claims of relics, relic chambers and reliquaries existed. Fruit of her passive reception and reveals an unexpected link between the long research on the Masson collection in the British Pali inscriptions of the golden manuscript and the reliquary, Museum, this chapter provides the first systematic ordering whereby part of the reliquary inscription was used to correct of the evidence uncovered in the first half of the 19th a defect in the text of the manuscript. century in the Darunta area of the Gandhara region, by I wish to acknowledge my sincere gratitude to all the Masson, Wilson and others. Errington exposes the institutions mentioned, for their sustained scientific and astonishing complexity of the material evidence: ruins of financial support, and to our distinguished contributors for stupa-like structures with human inhumation burials in a keeping faith with the publication despite delays caused by central cell constructed like a relic chamber; stupas with events in the societies studied and in the lives of individual prepared cavities like relic chambers with and without contributors. Echoing the Oxford philosopher, Michael reliquaries, with and without inscriptions, with and without Dummet, not only must I accept responsibility for any errors fragmentary bones. She constructs persuasive arguments that remain but if I could recognise them they would no for the wider significance of this area in the history of longer be there. Buddhist ritual and Buddhist art, notably in the early depiction of the standing Buddha. Notes Within the context established by Errington, Joe Cribb 1 D. Jongeward, E. Errington, R. Salomon and S. Baum (eds), presents a history of related research, and makes a new and Gandharan Buddhist Reliquaries, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2012; G. Schopen, ‘On the Buddha and his bones: the detailed examination of the most famous single object from conception of a relic in the inscriptions of Nagarjunakonda’, Journal this group of sites: the Bimaran golden reliquary from Stupa of the American Oriental Society 108, 1988, 527–37; J. Strong, Relics of the no. 2 and the objects, especially coins, found with it (now in Buddha, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2004; B. the British Museum). His conclusions provide a cautious new Subrahmanyam, Buddhist Relic Caskets in Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad, Ananda Buddhist Vihara Trust, 1999; Kevin Trainor, chronology for the Bimaran reliquary and its significance in Relics, Ritual and Representation in Buddhism: Rematerializing the Sri the development of the standing Buddha in Buddhist art. Lankan Theravada Tradition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Addressing the theme of relics indirectly, Michael Willis Press, 1997. delineates the parallels to be found between offerings deemed to be suitable for them and the offerings made to the Triple Abbreviations used throughout the volume Gem. Exploring how offerings are described in inscriptions ARIRIAB: Annual Report of the International Research Institute for and early texts, he illuminates the perceived nature of relics Advanced Buddhology at Soka University and their ritual contexts in pre-modern Buddhism. ASIAR: Archaeological Survey of India, Annual Report Karel van Kooij marshals textual alongside sculptural Be: Burmese edition of the Pali Tipiṭika (Chaṭṭha-saṅgāyana and archaeological evidence to expose the variety in the CD, Vipassana Research Institute) treatment of relics – those hidden from view in stupas, or BM: British Museum those displayed before rulers, monks and laity in magnificent CDIAL: R.L.