Removing The Sheen From Buddhism

[Husky]

Not really on the thread topic, but does concern Buddhism. Two items seen at the rajeev2004 blog:



indiandefencereview.com/news/[color="#0000FF"]chinas-asian-age-depends-on-spliting-india[/color]/

via rajeev2004.blogspot.co.uk/[color="#0000FF"]2013/11[/color]/fwd-chinas-asian-age-depends-on.html

Today as we discuss, the Chinese are busy strengthening economic and military ties with all our neighbours in an effort to lay the noose all around us. The Chinese have developed the Sri-Lankan port of Hambantota. They plan linking of Chittagong port in Bangladesh to the energy corridor in Burma. They are developing a rail link from the Tibetan capital Lhasa to Khasa on the Nepal China border which will reduce Kathmandu's hitherto dependence on India for imports. They also plan to develop Lumbini, birth place of Lord Buddha in Nepal as Mecca for Buddhists all over the world.

Then on the very next page of entries at the blog:



rajeev2004.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/oldest-buddhist-temple-found-buddha.html

Oldest Buddhist Temple Found, Buddha Older Than Thought

Archaeologists claim to have found the oldest known Buddhist temple, possibly pushing back the date of Buddha's birth by a century:



news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131125-buddha-birth-nepal-archaeology-science-[color="#0000FF"]lumbini[/color]-religion-history/

Posted by san at 11/25/2013 01:41:00 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Don't know why San (or anyone) would be jumping to the conclusion that the older temple at the site of the current one was Buddhist. If they can actually prove it was Buddhist, then this could certainly push the Buddha's date to earlier than currently assigned (something many already thought was the case, since the dating of Indian history has been quite arbitrary - before Alexander the Great at least.)



However, the older temple at the site need not be Buddhist. The only reasoning that the eager claimants interviewed at National Geographic can submit is the following, though it hardly constitutes "evidence" but is actually the usual special pleading:



1. Continuity of structural layout:

The layout of that more recent shrine duplicates the layout of the earlier wooden structures, pointing to a continuity of Buddhist worship at the site, Coningham says.

But it could just be that Buddhism acquired (such as by takeover) a pre-existing temple, and then, after centuries, had to eventually rebuild a new temple over it.

This is not a necessary answer of course, but because it can't be ruled out (and is not unheard of in Buddhism's case) there's no need to assume that the original temple was Buddhist or that the original temple was originally Buddhist.



I mean, consider the case of various temples and sacred sites taken over by Buddhism in Asia, many still not regained by the local religions. (And it's not just India or Sri Lanka, though more recent cases like Kathirgamam may sound more familiar to Indians: just because Buddhism now predominates and dominates at various important ancient Hindu temple sites in Sri Lanka does not magically mean that Buddhism constructed those temples or that Buddhism was the original occupant of those once-Hindu sites. I.e. people in the future would be wrong to assume that such originally-Hindu temples were built as Buddhist sites or even by Buddhists. But further below may just C&P an excerpt from the link pasted 2 posts up, which lists some examples that Indians may already know.)





2. Assumptions of Buddhism:

The tree roots appear to have been fertilized, and although bodhigara are found in older Indian traditions, the shrine lacked the signs of sacrifices or offerings found at such sites.



"It was very clean, in fact, which points to the Buddhist tradition of nonviolence and nonofferings," says Coningham.

Intriguing need to jump to conclusions of Buddhism by Coningham.



But, uh, to state the obvious: I'm not aware of Hindus ever having offered meat to sacred Trees (or to Elephants or Cows worshipped etc). In fact, many/all? trees are not offered any food and sometimes not offered flowers either. Also, different trees are worshipped differently by Hindus. For instance, one Tree in the premises of a certain Temple that I visited last time I went to Bharatam got little things tied to its branches by the Hindus. The things that the Hindus tied to it (couldn't properly see what they were) represented wishes: the Hindus appealed to the Tree for children. (That Tree is a Hindu God which famously blesses Hindu bhaktas with children.)



While Hindus may possibly do flower pooja to a Bodhi/Pippala/Ashwattha Vriksha as well, or hang garlands on them, what I'm more familiar with seeing is Hindus circumambulating the Vanaspati and reciting several famous stotras to it.



That's why the caution in the following statement from the article makes more sense:

(Julia Shaw, a lecturer in South Asian archaeology at University College London) was cautious about the oldest Buddhist shrine claim.



"The worship of trees, often at simple altars, was a ubiquitous feature of ancient Indian religions, and given the degree of overlap between Buddhist ritual and pre-existing traditions, it is also possible that what is being described represents an older tree shrine quite disconnected from the worship of the historical Buddha," Shaw says.

So I don't know why San at the Rajeev2004 blog so readily deferred to what's actually non-evidence of Buddhism per se (there's only evidence of Tree worship at the remains of a shrine pre-existing at that site) and declared that "therefore" Buddha's own birthday can be shifted backwards in time. Need *evidence* of *Buddhism* at that date, not evidence of pre-existing Indian religion: because we already know that Hindus' religion existed there at that earlier time, which is not a revelation.

But I'm aware that when it comes to Buddhism etc, Hindus never ask for evidence but operate on blind faith/emotion. Modern Hindus will just swear by it and speculate in its favour (at times even speculating against Hindus' own ancestral religion in favour of Buddhism/Jainism.)





More worrying is if China - in its recently-revealed goal of developing Lumbini, Nepal, as a Buddhist "Mecca" (as claimed at rajeev2004.blogspot.co.uk/[color="#0000FF"]2013/11[/color]/fwd-chinas-asian-age-depends-on.html) - will cause the world to pretend that Lumbini or all of Nepal is Buddhist, or even originally. Sort of like how people pretend that Bihar was always Buddhist and that Takshashila was originally a Buddhist learning centre, or that Afghanistan was ever more Buddhist than Hindu.





Anyway, the excerpt:

lankanewspapers.com/news/2009/7/46210_space.html

All five renowned Hindu shrines that existed long before the advent of Buddhism in Ceylon, - Thirukketheeswaram, Thirukkoneswaram, Naguleswaram, Munneswaram, and Thondeswaram - are now under the control of Sinhala Buddhist oppressors. The first three temples are under the direct control of the occupying armed forces of the Sri Lankan state which are made up entirely of Sinhala Buddhists except for a handful of Christians and Muslims.

[color="#800080"](Ignoring the angry language, the facts are that the afore-listed old Hindu temples in SL have been taken over, either directly or indirectly by or for Buddhism.)[/color]



The encroachment of Hindu Temples lands by the Sinhala Buddhist Monks with the help of Government of Sri Lanka and armed forces:



1)Buddhists Sinhala symbols, the stupa and bo-tree, are made use of to give legitimacy to Sinhala settlements in Tamil areas. The method normally adopted is to find a bo-tree in a Tamil area, erect a Buddhist idol underneath it overnight, stealthily build a vihara around it or near it with an incumbent Buddhist monk, and then the process of Sinhalisation of the area begins culminating in the claim that the region was an ancient Buddhist area.



2) Sudden discoveries are made of such symbols in archaeological excavations in sights historically known to have been that of Hindu shrines, and thereafter the process of converting the areas into Sinhala Buddhist areas begins as aforesaid. Cyril Mathew, a former minister and a henchman of President Jeyawardena, and rabid chauvinist was the chief architect of this scheme. He and his gang discovered over 100 ancient Buddhist shrines in the Eastern Province. The gang then decided that there should be only Sinhala Buddhists living within the limits of the area in which the peeling of the bells of the newly erected Buddhist viharas could be heard and by means of mob violence and stare terrorism they sought to implement this rule.



3) The declaration of sites of Hindu shrines as archeological reserves to undertake excavation operations, posing a danger to the temple, apart from bringing out false claims based on misinterpretation of findings to prove ancient Sinhala Buddhist settlements. The Muthumariamman temple in Kilivetty, in the Trincomalee District, is a case in point. A gazetted order for the excavation in the lands belonging to the Temple still hangs like the sword of Damocles over it, although the excavation process was suspended because of vehement protests by the former member of parliament. The inhabitants of this area have now been forcibly evicted by the armed forces.



4) Government notifications being issued that certain ruins are Buddhists ruins, as in the case of the historic Samanalankulam Pillaiyar temple in the Vavuniya District that has now been converted into Buddhist ruin.



5) Erecting imposing Buddhist statues in close proximity to ancient Hindu temples as in the case of Thirukoneswaram of Trincomalee, is yet another method adopted to ultimately wipe out Hinduism in Ceylon.



6) Forcible take over by Buddhist monks of Hindu shrines hitherto venerated and maintained by Hindus are not unheard of. Such take overs have taken place at Sellakthirgamam, near the main Murugan temple in Kathirgamam, and at the temple in the holy peak of the seven hills of Kathirgamam.



7) The pilgrim s rest at Kathirgamam managed by the Ramakrishna Mission of Colombo with its headquarters in Calcutta and which gave free board and lodging, to all pilgrims irrespective of religion , was taken over by the state and handed over to the Buddhist monks. Earlier the Hindu Mutts were razed to the ground in the move to declare a sacred area.



8) The Cultural Triangle Project funded by the UNESCO and presently undertaken in the Anuradhapurqa and Polonnanaruwa Districts, is madeuse of for the restoration of Buddhist shrines only, to the complete exclusion of the ancient Hindu temples in those areas. Under this project, in Anuradhapura, the Kathiresan Temple, once venerated by Swamy Vivekananda himself, is to be dismantled and re-erected elsewhere.

Alien converts to SL Buddhism pretend that Kathirgamam (or even Murugan) was always "equally" Buddhist or some such nonsense, sort of like how aliens (like Coningham) are now predisposed to assume that the older temple remains at Lumbini "must have been" Buddhist, despite there being no actual evidence for the case.

Of course, the pre-existing Lumbini shrine could potentially have been Buddhist, but we don't know that yet: no evidence discovered yet of the indisputably Buddhist nature thereof. As it stands, the shrine could just have been of a pre-Buddhist native religion, with a high chance of just having been Hindu. San could have just restricted himself to the known facts and leave the (premature) assumption in Buddhism's favour to dedicated Buddhists.