Removing The Sheen From Buddhism

[Husky]

Post 6/?



On why Lokesh Chandra's speculations remain that: speculation. Because there exist Potalaka theories/speculations favoured (and cited) by others. Not to mention that the 3 out of 5 reasons Lokesh gave for his choice of Shabarimalai as Potalaka derive from how he chose to trace the etymological origins of Potalaka. Can compare this to the different etymological origins for Potalaka traced by a Japanese author, Shu Hikosaka: also speculatively derived, as Shu too decided to take Potalaka as a literal place like Hsuan-Tsang did and to use the description of Hsuan-Tsang's choice of Potalaka as blueprint.



Note that I'm not saying that Lokesh's speculations are speculations and Shu's are "the fact". No. They are both just Mere Speculations, as can be seen from how Potalaka morphed from a spiritual place in the primary text into a "it's probably a physical place, Somewhere Out There" as per later Buddhists who tried to locate it in the physical world in various parts of Asia.



The point is to show that these two Potalaka theories (by Lokesh and Shu) - and several others that have been advanced by "scholars" regarding a physical locus for Potalaka - are "equally" [in]valid. At the very least, the existence of equally-plausible competing theories should call into question the certainty with which some people have been propagating Lokesh Chandra's Shabarimala=Potalaka theory via Rajeev's write-ups about it. (I already know it's too much to expect modern Indians "Hindus" to stick to tradition despite their awareness that so many diverse theories to rob them of their sacred sites are being launched Every Day by their missionary opponents. Equally unlikely is asking people to investigate for themselves the validity of theories being passed around. <- You know, that's that bit where people exercise their brain? The thing in their skulls? Never mind.)





1. The relevant pages on Ayyappa (pages 33-35) from Lokesh Chandra's "The Thousand-armed Avalokiteshwara". Screengrabs are from GoogleBooks.

Page 36 (where Lokesh makes the mistake of confusing Mahishi/Mahishasuri with Mahishasura) just recounts popular local narratives on Ayyappa without introducing Buddhisms, so am skipping that.**

















Can try the links if the images don't show:

http://i62.tinypic.com/3adci.png

http://i60.tinypic.com/oqwp46.png

http://i57.tinypic.com/72r3hu.png



** On page 36, the Punjabi scholar does end with a touchy-feely bit on how wonderful and moving Shabarimalai is and all, and how "the sacred hills of Shabarimala are a source of inspiration to people in India" (when I doubt that all or even most Indians outside the affected regions have heard of it***), but I'm sure that's because his Bauddhified self got interested in Shabarimalai only because he chose to identify it with Buddhism. If he had dismissed the possibility, he wouldn't give it a backward glance I'm sure. Rajeev, too, practically always mentions Ayyappa together with Buddhism now. In another article where he described difficulties he faced during a trek to see Ayyappa, Rajeev recounted how during this time of introspection he rather recalled how Buddhists must have earlier made this trek. <- I.e. he totally internalised Bauddifying rewrites of Hindu religio-history AGAIN: he has come to assume that Shabarimalai was a Buddhist site at one point in time and so he has further assumed that Buddhists must have gone there. But it's a belief based on a recently-invented (bad) speculation, no more.]





*** Considering that so many modern Indians are so ill-acquainted with Hindu scriptures that they fall for late Bauddhified backprojections, like how Hindus have now been propagating that Mahabali "must have" represented "Buddhism in Kerala's history" (when the Valmeeki Ramayanam speaks of Trivikrama vs Mahabali as ancient ur-history and when Mahabali was a Vedic ritualist from such original accounts, etc). I mean, when Hindus don't even know the basics of pan-Hindu narratives like the Ramayanam, why in the world would Hindus from a distant part of India be expected to know Ayyappa at Shabarimalai? <- Perhaps that's another reason why Lokesh Chandra and his indiscriminate parrots thought they could get away with passing Ayyappa/Shabarimalai off as Buddhist Avalokiteshwara/Potalaka.







2. And here's the Japanese writer Shu's choice of Potalaka: in Tamizh Nadu's Podigai/Potiyil -



www.chibs.edu.tw/ch_html/chbs/10/chbs1011.htm

Here it should be a matter of interest to refer to the modern Japanese scholar Shu Hikosaka’s work. On the basis of his study of Buddhist scriptures, ancient and medieval Tamil language literary sources, as well as field survey, he proposes the hypothesis that, the ancient mount Potalaka, the residence of bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara described in the Gaṇḍavyūha and Xuanzang’s Records, is the real mountain Potikai or Potiyil situated at Ambasamudram in Tirunelveli district, Tamilnadu, lat. 8º 36´, long. 77º 17´. With 2072.6 m, it is the highest mountain in the Tinnevelly range of Ghats.[30]　In his work, Shu also develops an interesting theory concerning the etymology of the name Potalaka. According to him, the original Tamil name Potiyil is a derivation from bodhi-il, where bodhi is a loan from Āryan languages meaning ‘Buddhism and Buddhists’, and the Tamil word il means ‘place, residence’. Thus the whole name indicates ‘the residence of Buddhists or Bauddha ascetics’. The word kai in Potikai is colloquial Tamil and has the same meaning as il”.[31]　In Sanskrit and Prākrit Mahāyāna texts another change took place─the il was translated back as loka, ‘the world or place’. Thus Potalaka is a corrupted form of Buddha-loka, ‘the place of Buddhists’.[32]　Shu also says that mount Potiyil/Potalaka has been a sacred place for the people of South India from time immemorial. With the spread of Buddhism in the region beginning at the time of the great king Aśoka in the third century B.C.E., it became a holy place also for Buddhists who gradually became dominant as a number of their hermits settled there. The local people, though, mainly remained followers of the Hindu religion. The　mixed Hindu-Buddhist cult culminated in the formation of the figure of Avalokiteśvara. The worship of Śiva Pāṃṣupata, however, remained popular too and blended with that of Avalokiteśvara.[33]

I have two issues with Shu's derivation of Potigai/Potiyil from bodhi-il:



a. If Potiyil had meant Buddhaloka, then even Prakritic-speaking Buddhists would have known enough to translate it directly into Pkt/Skt as such. Consider the lengths that Chinese converts to Buddhism went to to learn Skt just so they could get Buddhism right, to the point that they tried to make literal translations into Chinese of all the Pali, Skt and even Tamil names. Where the etymological origins of "Potalaka" are concerned, Lokesh Chandra has the more convincing argument, relatively-speaking. It's not necessarily the right one, but it's more reasonable than that of Shu. *Because* Lokesh at least assumed the meaning must have been transferred into Chinese (in Buddhabhadra's 5th century Chinese translation).



Further, if Buddhists were going to introduce a non-Skt word, why not then keep the allegedly original Tamil word? That is, if Potiyil/Podigai had anything to do with Potalaka, then Potiyil/Podigai are equally without apparent meaning in Skt as Potalaka, surely. So then Buddhist transcribers could have easily kept the Tamil word if they weren't going to properly translate it back anyway to the alleged Buddhaloka/Bodhiloka. (Else historians would have not have had to speculate Tamil etymological origins for the word, and speculate so differently besides.) That is, Buddhists who didn't understand the Tamil word enough - to render its meaning in Skt/Pali as its name - could at least have more closely stuck to the original word's sounds as best as they could, rather than invent a whole new word that neither in meaning nor pronunciation is related to the allegedly-Tamil predecessor. [That's assuming Potalaka isn't simply a newly-minted Skt/Pkt name with no necessary meaning, and no necessary origins in any other language. I mean, the earliest names and words were invented from random sounds and then given meaning, so why can't Potalaka just be "Potalaka"? Vedic Hindus of course liked for words to derive from the meanings of their constituent sounds, but Buddhists had left Vedic Hindu-dom and were never pedantic about Skt and not even into Skt originally.]



Besides, if the Buddhists supposedly knew to transfer the 2nd half of the word's (allegedly) intermediate Tamil etymology back to "loka" - as Shu conjectured - then why was the first part not equally sensibly transferred back? But as it happens, Buddhists didn't actually turn the 2nd half to "loka": the second half of the word is "laka", betraying no knowledge that the Buddhists thought (as Shu thinks they must have) that it was loka. It's all just an exercise in theorising. And that's why it's given rise to multiple theories on its etymology.





b. However, a more immediate reason for my not being convinced by Shu's take that Potiyil/Podigai would imply Buddhaloka or Bodhi-loka is because, unlike Sanskrit - but like all *European* languages that I know of - Tamil and S Hindu languages in general have short-o and short-e as well as long-o and long-e. Skt only has the long variants for these two vowels. And:



+ Podigai and Potiyil is SHORT O. (You can see this even in how the Doordarshan's Tamil channel Podigai is written with short-o in Tamil script.)

+ Whereas BOdhi is long-o, being Skt. If Tamil Hindus had derived the "Podi" bit in Podigai and Potiyil from BOdhi, as Shu claims, then they could easily have used the long version of the vowel.



When it came to writing, historically, only script characters for the long version of the e and o existed in the Tamil script. [Indicating that the script for Tamil may have been arranged based on the aksharas or script for Skt.] In the colonial era, the characters for long-e and long-o from the Tamil Grantha script (script for Skt) were introduced into the Tamil script, and relabelled as the characters for short-e and short-o sounds in Tamil. Despite the Tamil script not having had characters for short-o and short-e for a long time, yet the short-o sound in the pronunciation of Podigai and Potiyil had been preserved - same as the short-e sound in Venkatachalapati and Venkatachala malai have been preserved (same as Tamil has retained the short-e and the short-o sounds in the pronunciation of Tamil vocabulary in general: can hear these in the vocal rendering of any ancient Tamil language text); because Tamil Hindus have always differentiated between short-o and long-o and between short-e and long-e. We aren't as strict in differentiating between k and g (and h), for example, since that doesn't matter so much in Tamizh; but o and e differences do matter, as it's part of the Tamil language itself since ancient times. Any *written* renderings of Potiyil and Podigai with long-o in Tamil script is just a vestige of people at times still using the limited script characters of the past. The pronunciation still remains Potiyil and Podigai with short-o.



Therefore, it seems to me Shu's conjecture that Potiyil/Podigai must be named for BOdhi-anything is very unlikely. But Shu is Japanese and doesn't know Tamil, so maybe that can be forgiven.





- Podigai is ancient Hindu territory, and a very sacred Hindu site since ancient times (this is obvious even from the placenames).

The Podigai Malai (Mountains) are also called Agastiar Malai (Mountains) because it is very much associated with the Agastya Muni (Hindu religion) since very ancient times. That's why Agastya in Tamil is even called Potiyil Munivar: the Potiyil Muni. Podigai's ancientry is famously associated with Agastya - the Hindu Rishi who worshipped the Hindoo Gods, notably Shiva (Rishi Agastiar/Agastya is one of the first Siddhars of Shaivam).



- The Japanese scholar Shu too admits as much when he says that "mount Potiyil/Potalaka has been a sacred place for the people of South India from time immemorial" and also in his statement that "the locals remained followers of the Hindu religion" despite Shu's -conjectured- syncretist Buddhism there. That is, Shu admits it was Hindu originally and so the locals "remained" Hindu.



Nevertheless, Shu's decision to derive Potiyil from "possibly Bodhi-place" to make it fit his storytelling of equating it with the Potalaka of Hsuan-Tsang - and which etymology is obviously *quite* different from Lokesh Chandra's derivation, who with no less certainty derived the word as rather meaning "brilliance" based on Chinese sources -

Again: Shu's choice to derive Potiyil as "probably from place of Buddhists" to conflate it with Potalaka, has neo- or rather pseudo-Buddhists and other crackpots in TN threatening that this speculation constitutes "proof" that the Podigai/Potiyil area was "Buddhist originally" and that Hindus (dubbed evil brahmoons, since Buddhism wants to convert the resistant Hindoo laity) "had persecuted Buddhism out of there" etc. Never mind that even Shu in deriving the name Potiyil from Buddhism admits that the local masses there "remained Hindus" i.e. as before his hypothesised Buddhist syncretism in the area.



As regards that last, it is interesting to see the Estonian writer of that Gandavyuha paper - who betrays a Buddhist sympathy/adherence - twist Shu's own short statements. (See at link.) That is, Shu had said that despite (the alleged) Buddhist settlers in the place, "The local people, though, mainly remained followers of the Hindu religion". The Estonian in pretending to summarise Shu, declares in utter inversion that the locals must have worshipped some unnamed "gods and 'ghosts'" of some unnamed religion before Buddhism, and then with "Hinduism's triumph", Hinduism was to have inculturated on Buddhist Avalokiteshwara and turned him into Shiva. <- More proof of the Buddhism of the Estonian writer is not needed. Certain kinds of western Buddhist converts (and many modern Indian Buddhist converts, neo-Buddhist or not) tend to always assume Buddhism's innocence and Hinduism's guilt especially against all evidence to the contrary, and spin what other scholars say into an inversion. That and they like to identify syncretism everywhere.





And as regards Shu's final statements: "The mixed Hindu-Buddhist cult culminated in the formation of the figure of Avalokiteśvara. The worship of Śiva Pāṃṣupata, however, remained popular too and blended with that of Avalokiteśvara."



Note that these are nth degree speculations: i.e. they are speculations on "what could have happened afterwards", that follow from Shu's earlier speculations on the origin of the word Potiyil and the speculation that this must be the place Hsuan Tsang took for "Potalaka" (and that must have been a syncretic Buddhist site since Hsuan-Tsang assumed it was such), and the speculation that Potalaka may have been a physical place, etc.



Why does this class of writers always pretend that forced-syncretism with Buddhism (or missionary religion in general) was never rejected by locals? I already mentioned the example of how Hindus tried to avoid the Buddhist encroachment on a form of Shiva which Buddhism attempted via their Padmapani, early Hindus tried to avoid it by halting depictions of said Shiva form with padmam in hand. You can see Taoists even today resist the Bauddhification of a Taoist God which Buddhism had falsely depicted with a pig's head with an eye to popularising this false form (which Buddhism had subsumed into Buddhism). Taoists have also been consciously rejecting Buddhism's equally long-standing attempt to popularise several other Taoist Gods in Buddhist pseudo-yoga postures (another means by which Buddhism tried to assimilate Taoist Gods into the Buddhist hierarchy headed by the multiple Buddhas of Mahayana: Taoist Gods presented as doing Yoga to attain Buddhist-nirvana).



Notable is that what starts off as Shu's "theory" of Potiyil as Potalaka - based on his etymological derivation - is in the end turned into further speculation of how there "must have been a syncretistic Hindu Buddhist cult there" and what could have happened to it, etc. I was always surprised that the great many Bauddhified "Hindu nationalist" vocalists didn't pounce on Shu, considering that they already swear by Buddhism with mere lipservice to Hindu religion. But I guess Shu Hikosaka is only a "Japanese scholar", whereas Indian nationalists feel they must promote modern Indian "scholarship" (even if it is also mere speculation, and especially when others' speculations disagree with the Indian's). Plus Shabarimalai is in Rajeev's own backyard - Kerala - and he did several times think back wistfully on his allegedly and suddenly "Buddhist" ancestors and all - such as when propagating the modern theory that the Vedic Mahabali was a Buddhism. So of course Lokesh Chandra's conjecturing would have appealed more to RS than that of Shu. Alternatively, RS, his friend Devakumar Sreevijayan and most other Indian "nationalists" have never heard of Shu's theories. Which would explain why said readers blindly applauded Rajeev Srinivasan's article which essentially stated "Ayyappa was Buddhist aka Shabarimalai was Potalaka: because Lokesh Chandra said that Hsuan Tsang figured that the Avatamsaka Sutra implied so."





The screenshots from Googlebooks and the quoteblock are all what's relevant in this post too.