Post 17/?
Directly related to stuff in post 16, particularly the blockquote at its start.
3. Vijayavenugopal however does not claim that Potiyil Muni Agastya could have originally been Buddhist, or been originally associated with Avalokiteshwara, nor that the original claim was the Buddhist one: that Agastya learnt Tamil from Avalokiteshwara (the character that Buddhism developed to replace Shiva). All Vijayavenugopal has been able to say is that in the 11th century, a Buddhist (Puttamittiran) writing a Buddhist Tamil-language grammar work, had made claims to this effect for his religion. And Vijayavenugopal could hardly do otherwise: there is too much evidence to argue that Buddhism was merely appropriating for itself a far older (already long well-documented, established) Hindu tradition on the subject, which stated repeatedly that -the very much Hindu- Agastya had learnt Tamil from -the very much Hindu- Shiva (and Murugan).
Instead, Vijayavenugopal's objective is to use Puttamittiran's claims to make his case that the Avalokiteshwara cult/Mahayana Buddhism 'must have been really popular' in TN round about the period:
Vijayavenugopal's logic (or lack of it) is my problem. Because his conclusion (Mahayana's alleged popularity) does NOT follow from the claims on Agastya evident in 11th century Puttamittiram's backprojected Bauddhifying literature.
I mean, consider Santa Helena, Constantine's Mummy-Dearest:
She suffered from alleged "dreams", that various ancient sacred Hellenistic temple sites in GrecoRoman territory were "actually" the important places of the lately-invented jeebus' [fictive] life. She had the temples razed and hideous churches constructed there. (IIRC Elst and Ishwar Sharan both provide sources for this: some NZ historian wrote a book on it.)
The point is, the existence of Helena's claims identifying jeebusism all over heathen GR space in the 4th century does not at all prove
- the popularity of christianism at the time. It was not popular. It was gradually installed by the law and implemented by the sword.
Even upon the deat of the first christian emperor Constantine, the empire's heathenism was still alive. And a crazy christian emperor or two later, the heathen Emperor Julian still thought the empire salveagable for ancestral heathenism. Christianism was enacted "gradually" - but with acceleration - in Rome under its successive christian emperors.
- that Helena's dreams were part of general "christian tradition", before she launched her claims. Actually, Helena is likely to have been influenced in her "dreams" by the wishlist of the christian clergy. (There had been earlier cases of convert-empresses pleading on christianism's behalf to their heathen emperor husbands: all requests made by the church to the empress to act as their mediary to gain favours for christianism. What's the point of having a convert on the inside if you don't use it?)
To make it all sound valid/like divine inspiration - you know, similar to the labarum fiction - Helena made up the "dreams" bit.
Anyone can easily write down grandiose claims at any period of time (just like Buddhists wrote backprojected claims on Vedic Panini and Vedic Rishi Agastya). The crazy cult to which the claimants/claims belong may OR may not be popular at that time. Independently, the claims themselves may OR may not be popular (or even tradition) among the cult's adherents.
That is, there is no direct implication, but Vijayavenugopal is treating his conclusions as implications.
Also modern Buddhists and whiny Buddhist elements in SL (the Sangha esp.) often quote Hsuan-Tsang's statements for large numbers of viharas in a given city (and IIRC an expectedly low figure of monks/nuns to manage them) as indicating how "popular" Buddhism must have been in TN in that era. Jains make similar arguments. BUT: there are a great many churches in India, mushrooming pointlessly everywhere everyday - plus christianism owns the most land in India save the govt (see Ishwar Sharan) - but even so, anno 2014, all this land-hogging hasn't made christianism anywhere near as popular as the ancestral religion of the nation, let alone the majority religion. Christianism is still a minority religion, even after about 1500 years of terrorising India, plus it has only recently started gaining many converts (also through inculturation, appropriation and lying against ancestral religion/brainwashing - i.e. the same tactics). [Though, just for contrast: it seems that the tireless efforts of Hindoos has seen the reversion of 2 lakhs of ex-christians and ex-muslims in India in 2011. I don't know more recent figures.]
Nothing's changed. Buddhism/Jainism got lots of patronage, and even moreso during the periods they converted Hindu rulers to their religions - and then often persecuted the Hindu laity and went after Hindu sites (documented for the south at any rate). And with such patronage and wealthy converts who - as in early christianism - gave all to "charity" (probably the institution they converted to) as they entered the monkhood or nunneries*, the Indic missionary religions would have had enough money to build as many viharas etc to dot the country side as they wished.
* See Cilappadikaaram, where e.g. one character gave away his wealth and joined an Ajeevika order.
What I wish to point out is that there is no necessary correlation between number of religions buildings (or even monks/nuns) of missionary religions in a city and the popularity of said religions among the laity at that time.
And as for the "Mahayanism became very popular" conclusion: no evidence is cited, conveniently. The statement is just inserted as a matter-of-fact (perhaps because the writer thought Buddhist buildings mushrooming everywhere were "proof", and/or because he was busy developing the "buddha bhakti" theory in order to claim it won hearts and minds everywhere).
If Vijayavenugopal had evidence for Mahayana and its Avalokiteshwara-cult being "very popular", he'd surely have provided it. Instead he seems to think that presenting Puttamittiran's Bauddhifying claims on Agastya involving Avalokiteshwara constitutes proof for this. I want data, numbers. Or at least references. Even estimates of 4th century christians based on the number of churches let alone bishops is ... shaky reasoning. Yet at least western [christian] writers provided estimates of numbers and explained their (at times bad) working when estimating christianism's popularity. But not so Vijayavenugopal and other (Buddhist) Indian writers who seem content to declare that Buddhism (or its Mahayana variant) was popular because <"look how many Buddhist buildings there were, or even monks/nuns" or even the fact that a king converted and/or grants were being given>. But Joseph McCabe's sane reasoning on why certain estimation tactics are built on shaky premises is valid here too:
web.archive.org/web/20130515202108/http://www.freetruth.50webs.org/Appendix1.htm
From all the lack of tangible evidence provided for the allegations of mass-Buddhism and mass-Jainism in TN and the south in general that I've come across, I see no reason to budge from the status quo - as reflected in works like Silappadikaaram - that the laity in general remained followers of ancestral heathenism (i.e. Hindu heathenism) in TN/Kerala and even other states.
Yes Buddhism had mushroomed centres in cities of AP etc, but this says no more about AP's laity than Buddhism's vast array of monuments and centres in Afghanistan where the laity remained Hindu and the rulers eventually reverted too.
Directly related to stuff in post 16, particularly the blockquote at its start.
3. Vijayavenugopal however does not claim that Potiyil Muni Agastya could have originally been Buddhist, or been originally associated with Avalokiteshwara, nor that the original claim was the Buddhist one: that Agastya learnt Tamil from Avalokiteshwara (the character that Buddhism developed to replace Shiva). All Vijayavenugopal has been able to say is that in the 11th century, a Buddhist (Puttamittiran) writing a Buddhist Tamil-language grammar work, had made claims to this effect for his religion. And Vijayavenugopal could hardly do otherwise: there is too much evidence to argue that Buddhism was merely appropriating for itself a far older (already long well-documented, established) Hindu tradition on the subject, which stated repeatedly that -the very much Hindu- Agastya had learnt Tamil from -the very much Hindu- Shiva (and Murugan).
Instead, Vijayavenugopal's objective is to use Puttamittiran's claims to make his case that the Avalokiteshwara cult/Mahayana Buddhism 'must have been really popular' in TN round about the period:
Quote:What is important here is the popularity of the Avalokiteswara cult in the Tamil country. It attained much significance when Mahayanism became very popular.
Vijayavenugopal's logic (or lack of it) is my problem. Because his conclusion (Mahayana's alleged popularity) does NOT follow from the claims on Agastya evident in 11th century Puttamittiram's backprojected Bauddhifying literature.
I mean, consider Santa Helena, Constantine's Mummy-Dearest:
She suffered from alleged "dreams", that various ancient sacred Hellenistic temple sites in GrecoRoman territory were "actually" the important places of the lately-invented jeebus' [fictive] life. She had the temples razed and hideous churches constructed there. (IIRC Elst and Ishwar Sharan both provide sources for this: some NZ historian wrote a book on it.)
The point is, the existence of Helena's claims identifying jeebusism all over heathen GR space in the 4th century does not at all prove
- the popularity of christianism at the time. It was not popular. It was gradually installed by the law and implemented by the sword.
Even upon the deat of the first christian emperor Constantine, the empire's heathenism was still alive. And a crazy christian emperor or two later, the heathen Emperor Julian still thought the empire salveagable for ancestral heathenism. Christianism was enacted "gradually" - but with acceleration - in Rome under its successive christian emperors.
- that Helena's dreams were part of general "christian tradition", before she launched her claims. Actually, Helena is likely to have been influenced in her "dreams" by the wishlist of the christian clergy. (There had been earlier cases of convert-empresses pleading on christianism's behalf to their heathen emperor husbands: all requests made by the church to the empress to act as their mediary to gain favours for christianism. What's the point of having a convert on the inside if you don't use it?)
To make it all sound valid/like divine inspiration - you know, similar to the labarum fiction - Helena made up the "dreams" bit.
Anyone can easily write down grandiose claims at any period of time (just like Buddhists wrote backprojected claims on Vedic Panini and Vedic Rishi Agastya). The crazy cult to which the claimants/claims belong may OR may not be popular at that time. Independently, the claims themselves may OR may not be popular (or even tradition) among the cult's adherents.
That is, there is no direct implication, but Vijayavenugopal is treating his conclusions as implications.
Also modern Buddhists and whiny Buddhist elements in SL (the Sangha esp.) often quote Hsuan-Tsang's statements for large numbers of viharas in a given city (and IIRC an expectedly low figure of monks/nuns to manage them) as indicating how "popular" Buddhism must have been in TN in that era. Jains make similar arguments. BUT: there are a great many churches in India, mushrooming pointlessly everywhere everyday - plus christianism owns the most land in India save the govt (see Ishwar Sharan) - but even so, anno 2014, all this land-hogging hasn't made christianism anywhere near as popular as the ancestral religion of the nation, let alone the majority religion. Christianism is still a minority religion, even after about 1500 years of terrorising India, plus it has only recently started gaining many converts (also through inculturation, appropriation and lying against ancestral religion/brainwashing - i.e. the same tactics). [Though, just for contrast: it seems that the tireless efforts of Hindoos has seen the reversion of 2 lakhs of ex-christians and ex-muslims in India in 2011. I don't know more recent figures.]
Nothing's changed. Buddhism/Jainism got lots of patronage, and even moreso during the periods they converted Hindu rulers to their religions - and then often persecuted the Hindu laity and went after Hindu sites (documented for the south at any rate). And with such patronage and wealthy converts who - as in early christianism - gave all to "charity" (probably the institution they converted to) as they entered the monkhood or nunneries*, the Indic missionary religions would have had enough money to build as many viharas etc to dot the country side as they wished.
* See Cilappadikaaram, where e.g. one character gave away his wealth and joined an Ajeevika order.
What I wish to point out is that there is no necessary correlation between number of religions buildings (or even monks/nuns) of missionary religions in a city and the popularity of said religions among the laity at that time.
And as for the "Mahayanism became very popular" conclusion: no evidence is cited, conveniently. The statement is just inserted as a matter-of-fact (perhaps because the writer thought Buddhist buildings mushrooming everywhere were "proof", and/or because he was busy developing the "buddha bhakti" theory in order to claim it won hearts and minds everywhere).
If Vijayavenugopal had evidence for Mahayana and its Avalokiteshwara-cult being "very popular", he'd surely have provided it. Instead he seems to think that presenting Puttamittiran's Bauddhifying claims on Agastya involving Avalokiteshwara constitutes proof for this. I want data, numbers. Or at least references. Even estimates of 4th century christians based on the number of churches let alone bishops is ... shaky reasoning. Yet at least western [christian] writers provided estimates of numbers and explained their (at times bad) working when estimating christianism's popularity. But not so Vijayavenugopal and other (Buddhist) Indian writers who seem content to declare that Buddhism (or its Mahayana variant) was popular because <"look how many Buddhist buildings there were, or even monks/nuns" or even the fact that a king converted and/or grants were being given>. But Joseph McCabe's sane reasoning on why certain estimation tactics are built on shaky premises is valid here too:
web.archive.org/web/20130515202108/http://www.freetruth.50webs.org/Appendix1.htm
Quote:But even the figure of three million, seven hundred and fifty thousand is too high. Having myself made a thorough study of the fourth century (see my "St. Augustine and His Age," "Crises in the History of the Papacy," "Empresses of Rome," etc.), I can check Professor Schultze's deductions, and we shall find that he is too optimistic, even in his lower figure.
For most provinces of the Roman Empire he finds the number of bishops, and from this he estimates the number of the faithful. It is a delicate and treacherous method unless you know well the conditions of church-life in the fourth century. In my "St. Augustine" (pp. 195-7) I have shown that as late as the year 391, when Christianity was established by law and all other religions bloodily suppressed, the bishop of Hippo had only one church, with a few hundred worshipers, in a town of thirty thousand inhabitants, and that Augustine, who succeeded him, had not a single priest under him; yet because Schultze finds two hundred bishops in Africa about the year 310, he roundly estimates that there must have been one hundred thousand Christians. There is no known ratio of bishops and the faithful.
From all the lack of tangible evidence provided for the allegations of mass-Buddhism and mass-Jainism in TN and the south in general that I've come across, I see no reason to budge from the status quo - as reflected in works like Silappadikaaram - that the laity in general remained followers of ancestral heathenism (i.e. Hindu heathenism) in TN/Kerala and even other states.
Yes Buddhism had mushroomed centres in cities of AP etc, but this says no more about AP's laity than Buddhism's vast array of monuments and centres in Afghanistan where the laity remained Hindu and the rulers eventually reverted too.
Death to traitors.