The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c17.s1.163

v2.c17.s1.163

His identification apart, there is no reason to doubt, however, that Mr. Fergusson is perfectly correct in his opinion, that Puri was an ancient seat of Buddhism, and that the worship of Jagannātha is a relic of some Buddhist cultus. His arguments on this point are unassailable, and others are to be had in great abundance. The *Dāṭhāvamsa* relates that, even, in the fourth century, the Brāhmaṇs wished to make out that the tooth-relic was a part of Janārdana’s body (*ante*, p. [106]). Dr-Bühler, adverting to the *Nīlamata Purāṇa*, says ‘the mention of Buddha as an incarnation of Viṣṇu, and of his festivals, shows that in its present form the *Nīlamata* cannot be older than the 6th or 7th century of our era’, adding ‘the oldest work with a fixed date in which I have found Buddha represented as an *avatāra* of Viṣṇu, is Kṣemendra’s *Daśāvatāra-carita* which belongs to the 11th century. But the legend must go back to the 6th or 7th century as Buddhism became so insignificant during the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries, that nobody would have taken the trouble to identify its founder with a Brahmanical deity’¹⁹. Jayadeva, in the 12tn century, in his hymn to the ten incaranations, makes the same admission. Addressing the 9th incarnation, he says, ‘Aha! thou hast reviled all the Vedas which enjoin the sacrifice of animals at Yajñas, thou kind-hearted; O Keśava, thou hast assumed the form of Buddha; O Hari, lord of the universe, glory be to thee!’ I have, in my *Buddha Gayā*, quoted several passages from the *Gayā Māhātmya*, to show that Buddha was acknowledged, from the beginning of the 4th century, by the Hindus to be an incarnation of Viṣṇu, and worthy of adoration²⁰. The story of Gayāsura is incidentally reproduced in the *Puruṣottama Māhātmyä* and it is said that when the huge monster prostrated himself before the gods, his navel fell on Puri. Now, as I have shown in my *Buddha Gayā* that the story of the monster is an allegorical representation of the extent of Buddhism in India, it would follow that at the time when Gayā was the head-quarters of Buddhism, Puri was its navel, or an equally vital part. The chest of the monster was at the time, according to the same authority, at Yājapur. Viṣṇu, to mark his success over the demon, left his foot-mark at Gayā, his lotus at Konārak, his club at Yājapur, his discus at Bhuvaneśvara, and his conch-shell at Puri. This too implies a Buddhist supremacy in Orissa before the spread of Vaiṣṇavism. The Smṛti compilations of later date, such as the *Puruṣottama Tattva* of Raghunandana, which refer to the pilgrimage to Puri, make the same admission. Tradition everywhere accepts Jagannātha to be the same with the Buddha *avatāra*, and the image of that divinity has been accepted to be nothing more than a mystification of a Buddhist monogram. The idea was first started by Mr. Stevenson in a paper in the *Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain*,²¹ reiterated by Mr. Laidlay in his English version of the *Travels of Fa Hian*,²² and subsequently fully demonstrated by General Cunningham²³. Looking, moreover, to the history of Buddhism in other parts of India, and the way in which the Buddhist doctrine of the identity of the human soul with the divinity was appropriated by some of the Vedāntists; the Buddhist belief of the sanctity of the Bo tree made a part of the Hindu religion; the Buddhist repugnance to animal sacrifices taken up by the Vaiṣṇavas; and Buddhist emblems, Buddhist temples, Buddhist sacred places, and Buddhist practices appropriated to Hindu usages; it is impossible to resist the conclusion that Puri was, like Gayā, a place of Buddhist sanctity, and gradually converted to Hinduism.