Julia Shaw is a lecturer in South Asian archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. She has been carrying outfield work in India since 1997.
關鍵詞
Buddhism; Ancient India; Practical models of religious change; Pan Indian v. 'local' religion; stupas; relic cult; intervisibility; monasticism; water-management; ritual landscapes
摘要
This paper assesses the degree to which current ‘ritual’ and ‘practical’ models of religious change fit with the available archaeological evidence for the spread of Buddhism in India during between the third and first centuries BC. The key question is how Buddhist monastic communities integrated themselves within the social, religious and economic fabric of the areas in which they arrived, and how they generated sufficient patronage networks for monastic Buddhism to grow into the powerful pan-Indian and subsequently pan-Asian institution that it became. While it is widely recognized that in time Indian monasteries came to provide a range of missionary functions including agrarian, medical, trading and banking facilities, the received understanding based on canonical scholarship and inadequate dialogue between textual and archaeological scholarship is that these were 'late' developments that reflected the deterioration of ‘true’ Buddhist values. By contrast, the results of the author's own landscape-based project in central India suggest that a ‘domesticated’ and socially integrated form of Buddhist monasticism was already in place in central India by the late centuries BC, thus fitting closely with practical models of religious change more commonly associated with the later spread of Islam and Christianity.
目次
Abstract 83 Introduction 83 Sanchi Survey Project 84 Buddhist history and archaeology 87 Buddhism, urbanization and monarchical statehood in the Gangetic valley 88 'Passive' v. 'active' models of Buddhist propagation 90 'Domestication' of Buddhism and monastic landlordism 91 Buddhist transmission and reception: models of religious change 94 'Ritual' models: Buddhism and 'local' cults 94 'Practical' models of religious change: Buddhist propagation and the alleviation of suffering 98 Buddhist monastic sites in the landscape 100 Conclusion 103 Acknowledgements 104 Note 104 References 104
