EXPANSION OF INDIAN INFLUENCE
INTRODUCTORY
The subject of this Book is the expansion of Indian influence
throughout Eastern Asia and the neighbouring islands. That influence
is clear and wide-spread, nay almost universal, and it is with justice
that we speak of Further India and the Dutch call their colonies
Neerlands Indië. For some early chapters in the story of this
expansion the dates and details are meagre, but on the whole the
investigator's chief difficulty is to grasp and marshal the mass of
facts relating to the development of religion and civilization in this
great region.
The spread of Hindu thought was an intellectual conquest, not an
exchange of ideas. On the north-western frontier there was some
reciprocity, but otherwise the part played by India was consistently
active and not receptive. The Far East counted for nothing in her
internal history, doubtless because China was too distant and the
other countries had no special culture of their own. Still it is
remarkable that whereas many Hindu missionaries preached Buddhism in
China, the idea of making Confucianism known in India seems never to
have entered the head of any Chinese.
It is correct to say that the sphere of India's intellectual conquests
was the East and North, not the West, but still Buddhism spread
considerably to the west of its original home and entered Persia.
Stein discovered a Buddhist monastery in "the terminal marshes of the
Helmund" in Seistan[1] and Bamian is a good distance from our
frontier. But in Persia and its border lands there were powerful state
religions, first Zoroastrianism and then Islam, which disliked and
hindered the importation of foreign creeds and though we may see some
resemblance between Sufis and Vedantists, it does not appear that the
Moslim civilization of Iran owed much to Hinduism.
But in all Asia north and east of India, excluding most of Siberia but
including the Malay Archipelago, Indian influence is obvious. Though
primarily connected with religion it includes much more, such as
architecture, painting and other arts, an Indian alphabet, a
vocabulary of Indian words borrowed or translated, legends and
customs. The whole life of such diverse countries as Tibet, Burma, and
Java would have been different had they had no connection with India.
In these and many other regions the Hindus must have found a low state
of civilization, but in the Far East they encountered a culture
comparable with their own. There was no question of colonizing or
civilizing rude races. India and China met as equals, not hostile but
also not congenial, a priest and a statesman, and the statesman made
large concessions to the priest. Buddhism produced a great
fermentation and controversy in Chinese thought, but though its
fortunes varied it hardly ever became as in Burma and Ceylon the
national religion. It was, as a Chinese Emperor once said, one of the
two wings of a bird. The Chinese characters did not give way to an
Indian alphabet nor did the Confucian Classics fall into desuetude.
The subjects of Chinese and Japanese pictures may be Buddhist, the
plan and ornaments of their temples Indian, yet judged as works of art
the pictures and temples are indigenous. But for all that one has only
to compare the China of the Hans with the China of the T'angs to see
how great was the change wrought by India.
This outgrowing of Indian influence, so long continued and so wide in
extent, was naturally not the result of any one impulse. At no time
can we see in India any passion of discovery, any fever of conquest
such as possessed Europe when the New World and the route to the East
round the Cape were discovered. India's expansion was slow, generally
peaceful and attracted little attention at home. Partly it was due to
the natural permeation and infiltration of a superior culture beyond
its own borders, but it is equally natural that this gradual process
should have been sometimes accelerated by force of arms. The Hindus
produced no Tamerlanes or Babers, but a series of expeditions, spread
over long ages, but still not few in number, carried them to such
distant goals as Ceylon, Java and Camboja.
But the diffusion of Indian influence, especially in China, was also
due to another agency, namely religious propaganda and the deliberate
despatch of missions. These missions seem to have been exclusively
Buddhist for wherever we find records of Hinduism outside India, for
instance in Java and Camboja, the presence of Hindu conquerors or
colonists is also recorded.[2] Hinduism accompanied Hindus and
sometimes spread round their settlements, but it never attempted to
convert distant and alien lands. But the Buddhists had from the
beginning the true evangelistic temper: they preached to all the world
and in singleness of purpose: they had no political support from
India. Many as were the charges brought against them by hostile
Confucians, it was never suggested that they sought political or
commercial privileges for their native land. It was this simple
disinterested attitude which enabled Buddhism, though in many ways
antipathetic to the Far East, to win its confidence.
Ceylon is the first place where we have a record of the introduction
of Indian civilization and its entry there illustrates all the
phenomena mentioned above, infiltration, colonization and propaganda.
The island is close to the continent and communication with the Tamil
country easy, but though there has long been a large Tamil population
with its own language, religion and temples, the fundamental
civilization is not Tamil. A Hindu called Vijaya who apparently
started from the region of Broach about 500 B.C. led an expedition to
Ceylon and introduced a western Hindu language. Intercourse with the
north was doubtless maintained, for in the reign of Asoka we find the
King of Ceylon making overtures to him and receiving with enthusiasm
the missionaries whom he sent. It is possible that southern India
played a greater part in this conversion than the accepted legend
indicates, for we hear of a monastery built by Mahinda near
Tanjore.[3] But still language, monuments and tradition attest the
reality of the connection with northern India.
It is in Asoka's reign too that we first hear of Indian influence
spreading northwards. His Empire included Nepal and Kashmir, he
sent missionaries to the region of Himavanta, meaning apparently the
southern slopes of the Himalayas, and to the Kambojas, an ambiguous
race who were perhaps the inhabitants of Tibet or its border lands.
The Hindu Kush seems to have been the limit of his dominions but
tradition ascribes to this period the joint colonization of Khotan
from India and China.
Sinhalese and Burmese traditions also credit him with the despatch of
missionaries who converted Suvarṇabhûmi or Pegu. No mention of this
has been found in his own inscriptions, and European critics have
treated it with not unnatural scepticism for there is little
indication that Asoka paid much attention to the eastern frontiers of
his Empire. Still I think the question should be regarded as being
_sub judice_ rather than as answered in the negative.
Indian expeditions to the East probably commenced, if not in the reign
of Asoka, at least before our era. The Chinese Annals[4] state that
Indian Embassies reached China by sea about 50 B.C. and the Questions
of Milinda allude to trade by this route: the Ramayana mentions Java
and an inscription seems to testify that a Hindu king was reigning in
Champa (Annam) about 150 A.D. These dates are not so precise as one
could wish, but if there was a Hindu kingdom in that distant region in
the second century it was probably preceded by settlements in nearer
halting places, such as the Isthmus of Kra[5] or Java, at a
considerably anterior date, although the inscriptions discovered there
are not earlier than the fifth century A.D.
Java seems to have left some trace in Indian tradition, for instance
the proverb that those who go to Java do not come back, and it may
have been an early distributing centre for men and merchandize in
those seas. But Ligor probably marks a still earlier halting place. It
is on the same coast as the Mon kingdom of Thaton, which had
connection with Conjevaram by sea and was a centre of Pali Buddhism.
At any rate there was a movement of conquest and colonization in these
regions which brought with it Hinduism and Mahayanism, and established
Hindu kingdoms in Java, Camboja, Champa and Borneo, and another
movement of Hinayanist propaganda, apparently earlier, but of
which we know less.[6] Though these expeditions both secular and
religious probably took ship on the east coast of India, _e.g._ at
Masulipatam or the Seven Pagodas, yet their original starting point
may have been in the west, such as the district of Badami or even
Gujarat, for there were trade routes across the Indian Peninsula at an
early date.[7]
It is curious that the early history of Burma should be so obscure and
in order not to repeat details and hypotheses I refer the reader to
the chapter dealing specially with this country. From an early epoch
Upper Burma had connection with China and Bengal by land and Lower
Burma with Orissa and Conjevaram by sea. We know too that Pali
Buddhism existed there in the sixth century, that it gained greatly in
power in the reign of Anawrata (_c._ 1060) and that in subsequent
centuries there was a close ecclesiastical connection with Ceylon.
Siam as a kingdom is relatively modern but like Burma it has been
subject to several influences. The Siamese probably brought some form
of Buddhism with them when they descended from the north to their
present territories. From the Cambojans, their neighbours and at one
time their suzerains, they must have acquired some Hinduism and
Mahayanism, but they ended by adopting Hinayanism. The source was
probably Pegu but learned men from Ligor were also welcomed and the
ecclesiastical pre-eminence of Ceylon was accepted.
We thus see how Indian influence conquered Further India and the Malay
Archipelago and we must now trace its flow across Central Asia to
China and Japan, as well as the separate and later stream which
irrigated Tibet and Mongolia.
Tradition as mentioned ascribes to Asoka some connection with Khotan
and it is probable that by the beginning of our era the lands of the
Oxus and Tarim had become Buddhist and acquired a mixed civilization
in which the Indian factor was large. As usual it is difficult to give
precise dates, but Buddhism probably reached China by land a little
before rather than after our era and the prevalence of Gandharan art
in the cities of the Tarim basin makes it likely that their
efflorescence was not far removed in time from the Gandharan epoch of
India. The discovery near Khotan of official documents written in
Prakrit makes colonization as well as religious missions probable.
Further, although the movements of Central Asian tribes commonly took
the form of invading India, yet the current of culture was, on the
whole, in the opposite direction. The Kushans and others brought with
them a certain amount of Zoroastrian theology and Hellenistic art, but
the compound resulting from the mixture of these elements with
Buddhism was re-exported to the north and to China.
I shall discuss below the grounds for believing that Buddhism was
known in China before A.D. 62, the date when the Emperor Ming Ti is
said to have despatched a mission to enquire about it. For some time
many of its chief luminaries were immigrants from Central Asia and it
made its most rapid progress in that disturbed period of the third and
fourth centuries when North China was split up into contending Tartar
states which both in race and politics were closely connected with
Central Asia. Communication with India by land became frequent and
there was also communication _viâ_ the Malay Archipelago, especially
after the fifth century, when a double stream of Buddhist teachers
began to pour into China by sea as well as by land. A third tributary
joined them later when Khubilai, the Mongol conqueror of China, made
Lamaism, or Tibetan Buddhism, the state religion.
Tibetan Buddhism is a form of late Indian Mahayanism with a
considerable admixture of Hinduism, exported from Bengal to Tibet and
there modified not so much in doctrine as by the creation of a
powerful hierarchy, curiously analogous to the Roman Church. It is
unknown in southern China and not much favoured by the educated
classes in the north, but the Lamaist priesthood enjoys great
authority in Tibet and Mongolia, and both the Ming and Ch́ing
dynasties did their best to conciliate it for political reasons.
Lamaism has borrowed little from China and must be regarded as an
invasion into northern Asia and even Europe[8] of late Indian religion
and art, somewhat modified by the strong idiosyncrasy of the Tibetan
people. This northern movement was started by the desire of imitation,
not of conquest. At the beginning of the seventh century the King
of Tibet, who had dealings with both India and China, sent a mission
to the former to enquire about Buddhism and in the eighth and eleventh
centuries eminent doctors were summoned from India to establish the
faith and then to restore it after a temporary eclipse.
In Korea, Annam, and especially in Japan, Buddhism has been a great
ethical, religious and artistic force and in this sense those
countries owe much to India. Yet there was little direct communication
and what they received came to them almost entirely through China. The
ancient Champa was a Hindu kingdom analogous to Camboja, but modern
Annam represents not a continuation of this civilization but a later
descent of Chinese culture from the north. Japan was in close touch
with the Chinese just at the period when Buddhism was fermenting their
whole intellectual life and Japanese thought and art grew up in the
glow of this new inspiration, which was more intense than in China
because there was no native antagonist of the same strength as
Confucianism.
In the following chapters I propose to discuss the history of Indian
influence in the various countries of Eastern Asia, taking Ceylon
first, followed by Burma and Siam. Whatever may have been the origin
of Buddhism in these two latter they have had for many centuries a
close ecclesiastical connection with Ceylon. Pali Buddhism prevails in
all, as well as in modern Camboja.
The Indian religion which prevailed in ancient Camboja was however of
a different type and similar to that of Champa and Java. In treating
of these Hindu kingdoms I have wondered whether I should not begin
with Java and adopt the hypothesis that the settlements established
there sent expeditions to the mainland and Borneo.[9] But the history
of Java is curiously fragmentary whereas the copious inscriptions of
Camboja and Champa combined with Chinese notices give a fairly
continuous chronicle. And a glance at the map will show that if there
were Hindu colonists at Ligor it would have been much easier for
them to go across the Gulf of Siam to Camboja than _viâ_ Java. I have
therefore not adopted the hypothesis of expansion from Java (while
also not rejecting it) nor followed any chronological method but have
treated of Camboja first, as being the Hindu state of which on the
whole we know most and then of Champa and Java in comparison with it.
In the later sections of the book I consider the expansion of Indian
influence in the north. A chapter on Central Asia endeavours to
summarize our rapidly increasing knowledge of this meeting place of
nations. Its history is closely connected with China and naturally
leads me to a somewhat extended review of the fortunes and
achievements of Buddhism in that great land, and also to a special
study of Tibet and of Lamaism. I have treated of Nepal elsewhere. For
the history of religion it is not a new province, but simply the
extreme north of the Indian region where the last phase of decadent
Indian Buddhism which practically disappeared in Bengal still retains
a nominal existence.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: _Geog. Jour_. Aug., 1916, p. 362.]
[Footnote 2: The presence of Brahmans at the Courts of Burma and Siam
is a different matter. They were expressly invited as more skilled in
astrology and state ceremonies than Buddhists.]
[Footnote 3: Watters, _Yüan Chuang_, vol. II. p. 228.]
[Footnote 4: But not contemporary Annals. The Liang Annals make the
statement about the reign of Hsüan Li 73-49 B.C.]
[Footnote 5: Especially at Ligor or Dharmaraja.]
[Footnote 6: The statement of I-Ching that a wicked king destroyed
Buddhism in Funan is important.]
[Footnote 7: See Fleet in _J.R.A.S._ 1901, p. 548.]
[Footnote 8: There are settlements of Kalmuks near Astrakhan who have
Lama temples and maintain a connection with Tibet.]
[Footnote 9: The existence of a Hindu kingdom on the _East_ Coast of
Borneo in 400 A.D. or earlier is a strong argument in favour of
colonization from Java. Expeditions from any other quarter would
naturally have gone to the _West_ Coast. Also there is some knowledge
of Java in India, but apparently none of Camboja or Champa. This
suggests that Java may have been the first halting place and kept up
some slight connection with the mother country.]