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The History of Buddhist Thought c9.s1: Geography

The History of Buddhist Thought c9.s1

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English

Geography

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Two preliminary questions which must first be considered are the geographical and the chronological. The geographical facts are of the first importance, for they show that the early Brahminism as known from its literature belonged to a region far distant from the cradle of the new religion. The brahmin region was in the north-west of India, where its chief centre during the compilation of these documents was between the Ganges and the Jumna. Buddhism originated in a region much further to the east, a district which is treated by the brahminical works as unfit for the residence of brahmins. We cannot, therefore, assume that this Brahminism was identical with that known to the early Buddhists. It moreover claimed to possess a secret doctrine confined to exclusive schools, and some of its teachings do not seem even to have been known to the reformers of eastern India.

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The home of Buddhism lies in what is now South Behar, west of Bengal and south of the Ganges. This was the kingdom of the Magadhas, extending from the confluence of the Son with the Ganges towards the east some 150 miles as far as Bhagalpur, the ancient Champā. Forty miles to the south was the chief city Rājagaha (now Rajgir) and some 30 miles further south-west Buddha Gayā, the scene of Buddha’s enlightenment, and still further south the Southern Hills (Dakkhināgiri). The actual region of Bengal further east was then probably quite outside brahmin influence. Even to-day a linguistic map shows the Magadha region bounded on the south and east by tribes speaking non-Aryan (Muṇḍā) languages.¹

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¹ *Linguistic Survey of India*, vol. i, pt. 1.

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In Buddha’s time the aryanization of the country had begun but, as the anthropological evidence shows, it was the spread of an Aryan civilization over a more primitive population, and its introduction into this region was not by conquest but by gradual infiltration. In the eastern portion of Magadha dwelt the Angas, in Buddha’s time no longer an independent people. North of the Ganges were a number of peoples still in the tribal stage. The chief of these were the Vajjis with the chief city Vesālī (now Besar), and further north the Kolas and Mallas. To the west of these, between the Ganges and the Himalayas, were the Kosalas, a people who like the Magadhas were united into a kingdom, and had become paramount over other tribes. The capital was Sāvatthī (Śrāvastī), but another city is also mentioned, Sāketa or Ayodhyā,¹ and this appears to have been at a later time the capital. Among peoples subject to the Kosalas or under their suzerainty were the Kāsis in the south with capital Benares, and north of the Kosalas near the Himalayas a tribe destined to play an important part in later legend, the Sakyas (Śākyas), the tribe to which Buddha belonged. The Buddhist accounts speak of them as being ruled by a king, and say that if Buddha had not chosen to become a king of the Doctrine (Dhamma) he was destined to become a universal king (cakravartin) ruling from sea to sea. Nevertheless, there are indications that the rule of the Sakyas, like that of the adjoining tribes, was oligarchic. The district included part of what is now Nepal, and was probably never much more extensive.

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¹ Ayodhya is well known, being near the present Ajudhia in the Fyzabad District. The site of Sāvatthī is still disputed, but it is usually identified with Set Mahet, a large collection of ruins further north in the Babraich District of Oudh.

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It was within these districts that the first preaching of Buddhism took place, and we have good reason for holding that in Buddha’s lifetime it did not extend beyond. This may be inferred, not from the statements of the legends (which are often quite unhistorical, and represent Buddha as going to the Himalayas, Kashmir, and even Ceylon), but from the undesigned evidence furnished by the discourses themselves. Each discourse is preceded by a statement saying where it was delivered. Doubtless many of these ascriptions are inferences or mere guesses, but they do belong to an early tradition, and we find that according to this tradition the places which are recognized by it are practically confined to the districts mentioned above—the Magadha and Kosala kingdoms and the various tribes to the north-east. This limitation is the more significant when it is compared with the anachronisms of the stories found in the commentaries and Sanskrit works. We there find the mention of peoples in the extreme north-west, the Gandhāras, the Kambojas, the City of Taxila, and in the east Bengal, as well as southern India and Ceylon. The spread of Buddhism by the great trade routes was along the Ganges and Jumna towards the

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north-west and Kashmir and south of the Ganges along the Vindhyas, turning south to the west coast. Along these routes great Buddhist communities arose, and there is no doubt that legends connecting Buddha with these places were invented. But they are quite absent from the first four Nikāyas of the Pāli Scriptures, and these collections, even if they were revised in their present form as late as two centuries after Buddha’s death, show us the only region which has a historical claim to be the cradle of Buddhism.

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There is a single passage in the Pāli which appears to imply not a wider range of Buddha’s activity than that described above, but a much wider geographical knowledge among the early Buddhists than that implied in most of the texts. It is in the *Anguttara Nikāya*, i, 213, repeated iv, 252, 256, 260, and consists of a list of countries which has been held to be a statement of the political divisions of India in or before Buddha’s time.¹ But the collection of discourses in which it is found has less claim than some of the others to be considered early or as conveying contemporary information. It even contains a legend about king Muṇḍa, the fifth in descent from Buddha’s contemporary Bimbisāra. The passage in question is not one that has any concern with giving geographical information, but merely introduces the names in an illustration. It occurs in a discourse on the merit of keeping the fast day (*uposatha*), and there it is said in verse:

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¹ Rh. Davids, in *CHI.*, i, 172.

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The moon’s brilliance and all the host of stars
Are not worth a sixteenth part
Of the fast day kept with the eight precepts.

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This is developed in the prose, where it is said:

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Just as if one should rule with supreme lordship over these sixteen great countries, namely the Angas, Magadhas, Kāsis, Kosalas, Vajjis, Mallas, Chetis, Vamsas, Kurus, Pañchālas, Macchas, Sūrasenas, Assakas, Avantis, Gandhāras, and Kambojas, they are not worth a sixteenth part of the fast day kept with the eight precepts.

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The word for “ part ” is *kalā*, properly a digit, the sixteenth part by which the moon increases daily between new and full moon, and the phrase “ not worth a sixteenth part ” was proverbial.² The compiler wanted a list of sixteen countries, and he has evidently made it up from an earlier list, for the first eight names down to the Sūrasenas occur in the *Janavasabha-sutta*, Dīgha, ii, 200). In that sutta Buddha is said to have explained the destinies of persons in these countries who had recently died, stating whether they had attained Nirvāṇa or in what stage of spiritual progress they were reborn. It is this list of twelve to which four others have here been added, the Asakas of south India, the Avantis of the west, and the Gandhāras and Kambojas of the extreme north-west. These names are frequent enough in later literature, but their almost complete absence from the four Nikāyas, and the fact that the list is preceded by a shorter one, makes it unlikely that it is due to someone who had a knowledge of the political divisions of India before Buddha’s time.

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² Cf. *Dhp.*, 70; *Mahābh.*, xii, 174, 48; *Praśna Up.*, vi, 2.

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Dr. Hemachandra Raychaudhuri ¹ has pointed out a similar list of sixteen countries in the *Bhagavatī-sūtra* of the Jains, which he thinks is later than the Buddhist list. It certainly shows how such lists might come to be compiled. It has no mention of the northern Kambojas and Gandhāras, but it includes several south Indian peoples. All that this proves is that the Jain author wrote in south India, and compiled his list from countries that he knew.

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¹ *Political History of Ancient India*, p. 46.

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This bare list of names (which are not local, but names of tribes or peoples) has little to do with explaining the geography of pre-Buddhistic India. The additional names suggest the directions in which Buddhism spread, but historically we start with the kingdoms of the Magadhas and the Kosalas. These continued to exist for more than a century after Buddha’s death, until the usurper Chandragupta seized the Magadha kingdom, overran his neighbours, and extended his power over most of north India.

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