A Short Note On Bauddha – Astika

Encounters Over History


ஓம் சரவண பவ
On this third day of the Skanda Sashti Vratam, I prostrate at the lotus feet
of Subramanya, who took avatara as Kumarila, the Bhattacharya who re-
established the Vaidika Matha
I prostrate at the feet of Sri Sri Chandrasekarendra Saraswati
Mahaswamigal, who was born as Swaminathan, Sri Sri Jayendra Saraswati
Mahaswamigal, who was born as Subramanian and Sri Sri Shankara
Vijayendra Saraswati Mahaswamigal
These words are submitted at the holy feet of Thirumuruga Kripananda
Variar, who, by his Muruga Bhakti, rose to be called the 64th Nayanmar.
Over the millennium-long period when the Bauddha faith had a following
in Bharatavarsha, the Bauddha faith, there must have been innumerable
occasions where the faith came in conflict with the older Vaidika beliefs
and practices.
Over the last few decades, a narrative is being built that Vaidika beliefs
gained ascendancy and then suppressed other heterodox systems through
persecution and violence. A specific instance is a story about the
Mimamsaka Acharya, Kumarila Bhatta, who debated and won over many
Buddhist scholars. The scholar Upinder Singh describes him as cutting off
Buddhist and Jaina heads with an axe and powdering them in a mortar and
pestle. We searched for this claim and found that it was reproduced
verbatim from a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of British
Columbia, Canada. This claim, in turn, is referenced from a book
published in 2000 called – Conquest of the Four Quarters: Traditional
Accounts of the Life of Śaṅ kara. While the doctoral thesis claims it is on
page no 143, we note a mention in page no 86. All biographical details
about Kumarila Bhatta can be gleaned primarily from the the major
Shankara Digvijayam accounts and are reproduced here.
Kumarila Bhatta is said to have lived incognito among the Buddhists,
learning their doctrine and eventually using their own arguments to defeat
them.
A few things about his life story come to the forefront
 When the monks discovered he was not a genuine Bauddha seeker, but an

imposter, they are said to have thrown him off a cliff. While falling, he

exclaimed – ‘If the Vedas are indeed true, may they protect me!’. Since

there was a shadow of doubt, he lost eyesight in an eye, even though he

 survived. He should have said instead – ‘Let the Eternally True Vedas

Protect Me!’

 Another version of the story has the Bauddhas challenging him to prove the

veracity of the Vedas by falling off a cliff.

 The act of hiding one’s true intentions from a Guru is Guru-Droha, for

which Bhatta laid down his life in a punishment as per the shastras –

immolating himself in a pyre made of burning rice husk – a process that

would kill the penitent slowly.

The picture that emerges of Kumarila Bhatta is vastly different from what
has been portrayed by the Western scholars.
The Shankara Digvijaya of Anandagiri is said to have described him as
persecuting Buddhists and Jainas. The original text of Anandagiri’s work
has been lost and we only have a reference to it from a 19th Century
commentary on the central Madhava’s Shankara Digvijaya. This
description must be assumed to be an apocryphal aspect of Kumarila’s life.
The canonical Madhaviya Shankara Digvijaya has no such description.
Jonathan Bader’s book quotes this as a reference from the Madhaviya
Shankara Digvijaya, which is erroneously described as a work composed
between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Tradition, however, has it
as a work composed by the sage Vidyaranya in the fourteenth century. The
Shankara Digvijaya has a rather dilatory description of Kumarila cutting
the tree of Buddhist teachings, branch by branch, with the axe of his
dialectic arguments. The mountains of Bauddha philosophy were said to
have been ground to dust by the thunderbolts of Kumarila’s arguments. In
all of this, there does not seem to be any primary evidence for violence
perpetrated on Bauddhas by Kumarila. To quote this as evidence of
Vaidika violence upon Bauddhas is somewhat far-fetched, in our opinion.
On the other hand, history is replete with instances of Bauddhas
persecuting Astikas. The earliest records come down to us from the
Chachnama, in which Buddhist populations in Sindh were said to have
collaborated with Muslim invaders against their Brahmin rulers. In the
20th Century, Myanmar saw frequent riots between Hindu Indians and
Buddhist Burmese, which culminated in the World War 2 exodus of
Hindus from Burma to India.
Later in the 20th Century, Sinhalese Buddhists carried out pogroms
resulting in the exodus of Tamil Hindus from Sri Lanka all over the
world.
In both Myanmar and Sri Lanka, religious conflict was part of the reason
for the conflict.
Given this background, how, then, do we explain the subsumption of
Buddhism into mainstream Hindu beliefs in India?
We would like to draw attention to the hallowed tale of Shakya Nayanar,
one of the 63 Nayanmars of Shaiva Siddhanta. Shakya Nayanar was a man
from the Vellalar clan, which is famed as the upholders of Shaivism in
Tamil lands. He is said to have been drawn by the teachings of Buddha in
his youth, took to the cloth and studied Buddhist philosophy in Kanchi.
However, over time, his heart was drawn to the infinite grace of
Sadashiva.
While still in the outward form of a Buddhist Bhikshu, he became a
staunch devotee of Shiva. He vowed to never take his sole meal of the day
without a darshan of a Sivalingam. When he did this for the first time, he
was so overwhelmed by bhakti that, not knowing what to do, he threw a
stone at the Shiva Lingam. He continued this as a daily practice for years.
In his infinite Grace, the Lord accepted this as a veneration and raised him
to Kailasha.
This, in a nutshell, describes the sheer depth and grace of the Hindu faith
that eventually subsumed Buddhism.
Subramanyoham! Subramanyoham! Subramanyoham!