Śaka Clans, Pallava Royals, Śākya Nāyanār and
Bodhidharma
Bodhidharma is the founder of Zen
Buddhism in China. He belonged to the Kṣatrya royal family of Pallavas who ruled from Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu. Bodhidharma was a name given later, and his original name seems to be Bodhitārā. He was the third
and last son of a south Indian great king. His teacher was Prajñātārā, who taught Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra. Throughout Buddhist art, Bodhidharma is
depicted as an ill-tempered, profusely-bearded, wide-eyed, red-haired
person. He is referred as "The Blue-Eyed
Barbarian" (Chinese: 碧眼胡; pinyin: Bìyǎnhú) in Chan texts. This is a very interesting
information about Bodhidharma’s ethnicity and in general, about Pallava
dynasty. Pallava itself is thought to be the Sanskritization of Pahlava of
Iran. Pallava means “Toṇḍai” flowers, the tutelary plant of Pallavas, and the mythical first
king was Ātoṇḍa Cakravarti”. Kamil Zvelebil referred to Bodhidharma’s Pallava
origin and wrote an essay in 1987 linking a Tamil proverb and a Kōan attributed to Japanese Zen master, Hakuin. I found a song
in which a famous poet, Bharatidasan uses this same proverb, a little earlier
than when Prof. Zvelebil collected data about various Tamil dialects in
1950s. Bharatidasan’s song is given at
the end after Zvelebil’s essay. It is possible that this proverb/kōan exists in some Chan/Zen works in Chinese or Tibetan
sources earlier than Hakuin. Śākya Nāyanār, originally a Buddhist, is one of
the 63 saints of Śaivism. Śākya Nāyanār, like Bodhidharma, was a Buddhist
who lived in Kanchipuram.
India is a
country known for its Oral traditions of preserving wisdom. Due to the Vedic
texts available from 12th century BC onwards and, Sangam Tamil from
3rd century BCE, and also from Archaeological, Art Historical,
Linguistic and Paleo-Genetics research, scholars illuminate the “Vedic Night”
from the time of Indus Valley decline to Historic period. Vedic Night refers to
the time period from Post-Harappan Copper Hoard culture in the Yamuna-Ganges
plains to Pre-Sangam period in South India. Aryan language speakers from
Central Asia enter India in three phases: (a) the First wave, creators of
Atharva Veda in post-Harappan times merge with earlier religious traditions of
Indus Valley. The Indus crocodile cult becomes Anthropomorphic Axe (AA)
sculptures in Post-Harappan Indo-Gangetic doab
area. A millennium later, during Iron Age, these AA sculptures are the first
monoliths found in megalithic burial sites in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.
Pandya kings issue Aśvamedha sacrifice coins conducted showing crocodiles in
tanks.
Figure 1. PĀṆḌYA Peruvazhuti Ashvamedha coin, 3rd century BCE (Note Makara crocodile outside water pond).
(b) The Second wave is the Rgvedic Aryans with Indra as the supreme
deity (c) Finally, the Śaka tribes from Iran. Buddha, Mahāvīra, and much later Pallavas like Bodhidharma belong to the Śākya clan. An excellent reference is The Roots of Hinduism,
The early Aryans and Indus civilization, by Asko Parpola (Oxford University,
2015). Some additional references given at the end to pursue more on the
religious history in Tamil lands in First millennium BC when the Bodhidarma’s
forefathers moved in from Central Asia co-opting with the Dravidian elites, a
process that started from Atharva Vedic Aryan tribes (Dāśas/Daśyus) around 1700 BCE.
Two lasting
influences of Śaka clans in India are (1) Creation of Brahmi script in North
India and (2) Dog sculpture representing the star Sirius in Gaṅgādhara panels
carved in Pallava caves. Brahmi script is formed with most letters formed from
two basic forms - circle and square. Interaction with Greeks in the Persian empire during Darius the Great with Gandhāra forming part of his kingdom led to this development. Greek capital letters form the model for most Brahmi letters. In fact
these basic geometric forms are inscribed at the end of Tamil Brahmi
inscription at Kongar Puliyangulam, near Madurai (Cf. M. Lockwood). An early form of Pre-Mauryan Brahmi letters
appears in Anthropomorphic Axe (AA) sculpture with a Makara (crocodile) face in
Sonipat, Haryana around mid 6th century BCE.
Fig. 2 Anthropomorphic Axe (Makara Viṭaṅkar) with Pre-Mauryan Brahmi
The Jaina emperor, Candragupta
Maurya and his grandson, Aśoka spread Brahmi throughout Indian subcontinent as
the official script for all Indian languages. In Tamil Nadu, places like Kodumaṇal
routinely yield pottery with Tamil Brahmi in the mid-5th century (K. Rajan, Early Writing System: A Journey from Graffiti to Brahmi, 2015, Madurai.) Dilip Chakravarti, Archaeologist, Cambridge Unversity wrote a book review.
In ancient
Iran, the Summer festival of Rain is dedicated to Sirius, the brightest star in
the Night Sky. Sirius is known colloquially as the "Dog Star",
reflecting its prominence in its constellation, Canis Major (the Greater Dog).
Canis Major was classically depicted as Orion's dog, Mṛgavyādha
"hunter". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_Triangle Due to the Greco-Persian wars and trade, ancient Śaka folks
took the Sirius "Dog star" idea to South India. Their descendants,
Pallava kings, incorporate the dog star Sirius sculpture in Gaṅgādhara panels
in the 7th century. Gaṅgādhara is very popular in Pallava art in Kanchipuram,
Mamallapuram etc.,
Fig 3. Śiva Gaṅgādhara with Sirius (Dog star) and Ganges, Pallava, Trichy, 7th century.
The melting snow in the Himalayas flow as the river Ganges
in Summer and in Śaiva legends, Gaṅgā flows on the matted locks of the God
Śiva. Michael Lockwood, in "Mystery Dog in Pallava Sculpture" (Indian
Express, March 6, 1976) wondered about the significance of the dog, now mostly
hidden under plaster. "What is surprising is that in many of these Gaṅgādhara
panels a dog appears in one of the upper corners. To put it mildly, the dog is
considered a lowly creature in Indian tradition. It is therefore difficult to
guess why the Pallava artists should have introduced a dog into the Gaṅgādhara
theme – a theme which represents such an auspicious event for the whole
world." Śiva's nakṣatra is Ārdrā (Orion) meaning "moist"/"green" and He is correlated with monsoon rains through heliacal rising of Orion and Sirius in the month of June. Fertility is symbolized by Śiva Liṅga worship,
and Śiva as Gaṅgādhara sports a dog (= Sirius) in the top corner. Like
Bodhidharma and Śākya Nāyanār, Gaṅgādhara panels with dog are many in
Kanchipuram Pallava era temples pointing to these kings' Śaka connections.
Kōppeñciṅkan, in 13th century, calls himself a Pallava/Kāṭavan. His
inscriptions in verse are in Tiruvannamalai temple. In a verse describing
Gaṅgādhara form, Śiva appears in the form of a Dog, i.e., Sirius star (Mayilai
Cīni Venkatasamy, Journal of Tamil Studies, 1974). This is akin to Varuṇa assuming
the Crocodile form in the Makara Viṭaṅkar ("maḻu vāḷ neṭiyōn" of
Sangam texts) in the Anthropomorphic Axe sculpture from Sonipat, Haryana. [Kak,
Kurdush]. Much earlier, in Indus valley itself, Mahāyogi Paśupati has the legs
of Gauṛ buffalo and wears the horns of Gauṛ.
A parallel seal shows "Paśupati" as a Gangetic crocodile while
surrounding animals in both the IVC seals are identical.
Pāṇḍava and Pāṇḍya:
A. Parpola,
ΠΔANΔAIH AND SĪTĀ: On The Historical Background of the Sanskrit Epics, Journal
of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 122, No. 2, pp. 361-373, 2002.
"The
culture distinguished by the use of iron, horse, and Painted Grey Ware (PGW)
(c. 1000-350 B.C.) is found lowest at all major sites associated with the main
story of the MBh. It thus offers a suitable archaeological correlate to the
earliest layers of the MBh (cf. Lal 1981; 1992; Buitenen 1973: I, lf.; Erdosy
1995: 79ff.; Brockington 1998: 133, 159-62). I have suggested that the early
PGW culture with few and small towns (c. 1000- 700 B.C.) represents the Middle
Vedic culture and its Kuru kingdom, and the late PGW culture with many more
towns including Mathurā (c. 700-350 B.C.) the Pāṇḍava period (Parpola 1984:
453ff.).
King Pāṇḍu
and the five Pāṇḍavas are never once mentioned in any Vedic text (Weber 1853:
402f.; Hopkins 1901: 376, 385, 396; Horsch 1966: 284; Brockington 1998: 6). The
Pāṇḍavas, therefore, have arrived on the scene only after the completion of
Vedic literature. They could crush the Kurus by making a marriage alliance with
the Kurus' eastern neighbors, the Pañcālas. To consolidate their rule, the
victorious Pāṇḍavas let themselves be grafted onto the Kuru genealogy and be
represented as cousins of their former foes (Lassen 1847: I, 589-713; Weber
1852: 130-33; 1853: 402-4; Schroeder 1887: 476-82; Hopkins 1889: 2-13; 1901:
376)."
"Apart
from the absence of their mention in Vedic texts, there are other indications
pointing to the foreign, and specifically Iranian, origin of the Pāṇḍavas (cf.
Parpola 1984). Their polyandric marriage, which shocked the people present (MBh
1,197,27-29; Hopkins 1889: 298f.), can be compared to the customs of the
Iranian Massagetae (Herodotus 1,216). Hanging their dead in trees (MBh
4,5,27-29; Brockington 1998: 227) resembles the Iranian mode of exposure of the
corpse to birds.
Foreign,
northerly origin is suggested by their pale skin color, which the MBh
(1,100,17-18) connects with the name of Pāṇḍu, literally 'pale'; the name
Arjuna likewise means 'white' (Lassen 1847: I, 634, 641-43). Sanskrit pāṇḍu-,
pāṇḍura-, pāṇḍara- 'white, whitish, yellowish, pale', attested since c. 800
B.C. (SB, SA), are loanwords going back to the same Dravidian root as Sanskrit
phala- 'fruit' (cf. Tamil paḻam 'ripe fruit') and paṇḍita- 'learned'
(differently Mayrhofer 1996: II, 70f.,
201f.),
namely paḻ- / paṇḍ- 'to ripen, mature, arrive at perfection (as in knowledge,
piety), change color by age, (fruit) to become yellow, (hair) to become grey,
to become pale (as the body by disease [esp. leukoderma])' (cf. DEDR 4004;
Parpola 1984: 455)."
"PĀṆḌYAS
OF SOUTHERN MADHURĀ
The second
Siṃhala king was called Paṇḍu-Vāsudeva. Paṇḍu(ka) figures in names of other
Sinhalese kings as well, and associates them with the Pāṇḍavas of the MBh (thus
also Lassen 1852: II, 102f.), whose father Pāṇḍu is called Paṇḍu (Cullavagga
64,43) or Paṇḍurājā (Jātaka V, 426) in Pāli texts. Paṇḍu-Vāsudeva's father-in-law,
who ruled in a kingdom on the Ganges river, was likewise called Paṇḍu. He
belonged to the Śakya clan, being a relative of the Buddha. Śakya is derived
from Śaka, one of the principal names of Iranian steppe nomads. Its association
with the name Paṇḍu is an additional hint of the Iranian origin of the Pāṇḍavas.
[...]
Southern
Madhurā is modern Madurai in Tamil Nadu, the capital of the Pāṇḍya kings, whose
dynastic name is irregularly derived from Pāṇḍu (Pat. on Vārtt. 3 on Pāṇ.
4,1,168). The Sri Lankan kings kept contact with this city also later on (cf.
Malalasekera 1937: II, 439). Megasthenes, writing c. 300 B.C., refers to the Pāṇḍya
country when speaking of the Indian Heracles:
this
Heracles ... had only one daughter. Her name was Pandaea [Pandaiē], and the
country in which she was born, the government of which Heracles entrusted to
her, was called Pandaea after the girl.... Some other Indians tell of Heracles
that, after he had traversed every land and sea, and purged them of all evil
monsters, he found in the sea a new form of womanly ornament... the sea
margarita [pearl] as it is called in the Indian tongue. Heracles was in fact so
taken with the beauty of the ornament that he collected this pearl from every
sea and brought it to India to adorn his daughter ... among the Indians too the
pearl is worth three times its weight in refined gold. (Arrian, Indica 8,6-13,
trans. Brunt 1983: 329-31)"
"Meanwhile
some megalithic Pāṇḍus turned towards the culturally more advanced northern
India. Through marital and other alliances they eventually gathered such a
force that one group, the Pāṇḍavas, took over the rule even in the mightiest
kingdom of north India. Another successful group was the family to which the
Buddha belonged: the Śākyas, too, were Pāṇḍus, ultimately of Śaka origin, as
their name reveals. In north India, the Pāṇḍus quickly adopted the earlier
local culture and language. Their newly won positions were legitimated with
fabricated genealogies that made them a branch of the earlier ruling family,
and with the performance of royal rituals. The propaganda was disseminated by
professional bards, leading to the creation of the Mahābhārata."
References:
(1) N.
Ganesan, Indus Crocodile Religion as seen in the Iron Age Tamil Nadu, 16th World
Sanskrit Conference Proceedings, Bangkok, Thailand, 2016.
https://archive.org/details/IVCReligionInIronAgeTamilNaduByNGanesan-2016-16thWSC
(2) M.
Lockwood, Buddhist Influence in the Gospels and The Invention of the Brahmi
Script, 2017.
(3) M.
Lockwood, The Invention of the Brahmi script: Where and under what
circumstances! 2020.
(4) Kurush
Dalal, Metal Men of the Doab: Still Figuring it Out https://www.livehistoryindia.com/history-daily/2020/06/17/anthropomorph
(5) S. Kak,
A Reading of the Brāhmī Letters on an Anthropomorphic Figure
https://medium.com/@subhashkak/a-reading-of-the-br%C4%81hm%C4%AB-letters-on-an-anthropomorphic-figure-2a3c505a9acd
(6) India's
Parthian Colony: On the origin of the Pallava empire of Dravidia
https://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/History/ashkanian/parthian_colony.htm
(7) Blue
Eyes of Daruma san
https://darumasan.blogspot.com/2005/02/me-blue-eyes-of-daruma.html
(8) http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/bodhidharma.htm
(9) B.
Faure, Bodhidharma as Textual and Religious Paradigm,
History of
Religions, Vol. 25, No. 3, pp. 187-198, 1986.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Sound of the One Hand
Kamil Zvelebil, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 107, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1987), pp. 125-126
The Japanese Rinzai Zen master Hakuin (1686-1769) is credited
with the invention of a famous kōan, “What
is the sound of one hand clapping?" He describes the kōan in a letter
to a laywoman: “What is the Sound of the Single Hand? When you clap together
both hands a sharp sound is heard; when you raise the one hand there is neither
sound nor smell ... This is something that can by no means be heard with the
ear. ..."[1] Virtually all experts on Zen ascribe this kōan to Hakuin,
maintaining that it was composed or invented by him.[2] It is most often either
this kōan or the kōan ‘Mu' which the novices receive as their first kōan when
they begin their training in Zen Buddhism. Authors on Zen consider the
invention of this kōan a very remarkable and very original achievement of
Hakuin.
In Folklore 15.1,[3]
D. G. Niyogi published some Tripuri proverbs in the original and in an English
translation. One of these proverbs says, “One hand's clapping does not produce
sound.” I admit that I was surprised to read this, and I began to search for
parallels elsewhere in India. And, indeed, to my delight, I found in Herman
Jensen's immensely valuable collection of Tamil proverbs,[4] under no. 2823,
the following one: oru kai tațțināl, ōcai eḻumpumā? “If one hand (only) is struck, will the sound (of clapping) be
produced?” I subsequently searched through my notes collected in 1958 when I
investigated various local and social dialects of Tamilnadu, and indeed
discovered this saying: irukayyi tațțina: tã: o:ce (Madras Non-Brahmin) “only
if (one) claps two hands, (there's) a sound.”
There are three possible explanations of this striking
'coincidence’. The similarity between the Indian proverbs (from two vastly
distant and linguistically unconnected regions of India) and a sophisticated kōan
of a Japanese Zen master is "purely accidental,” as the saying goes. This
is of course not ruled out; however, it seems to me to be rather improbable.
The authorities on Zen consider Hakuin's kōan a truly creative, witty personal
accomplishment.
Another alternative is that Hakuin indeed “invented” this
saying, and that it has somehow entered Indian folklore. I consider this
virtually impossible, taking into account Hakuin's relatively late date, the
geographic distance, and the occurrence of the notion of “no sound produced by
one hand's clapping” in two separate folk-cultures of India.
The last alternative is that Hakuin has not “invented” the kōan
but that it was current in the oral (?) transmission of Zen Buddhism, and
Hakuin knew it, used it, and popularized its use. Let us examine this
possibility.
Persistent tradition tells us that the ‘first Zen patriarch'
Bodhidharma (ca. 470-532) was an Indian monk, the son of South Indian ruler, a
king of Kanchipuram, and that he appeared one day at the southern Chinese port
city of Canton around 520 A.D. whence he traveled to see Emperor Wu of the
Liang dynasty. This tradition point thus to Bodhidharma as a member of the
ruling clan of the South Indian dynasty of the Pallavas, the contemporary of
Skandavarman IV or Nandivarman I.
It is well known that Kanchipuram, the Pallava capital, was one
of the most important strongholds of Indian Buddhism. An ancient Prākrit
charter (the British Museum plates of Queen Cārudevī) [5] mentions among very
early Pallavas two kings called Buddhavarman and Buddhayānkura, obviously
Buddhists, belonging probably to the 4th century A.D. Another Buddhavarman
belongs to ca. 540-560 A.D. The well-known commentator Buddhaghoṣa lived in Kanchipuram probably in late 5th century
A.D. The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Hsüan Tsang who visited South India in the
7th century A.D. tells us that there were about a hundred Buddhist monasteries
in the city with more than 10,000 monks, and he also refers to Kanchih-pu-lo as
the birth-place of Dharmapāla, the reputed author of treatises on etymology,
logic and Buddhist metaphysics.[6] Undoubtedly, the Zen tradition of a South
Indian Buddhist monk coming possibly from Kanchipuram to China in the early 6th
century may be regarded as trustworthy. If Bodhidharma was a Tamil-speaking
South Indian (whether Brahmin, as one version has it, or a prince), the popular
saying of one hand producing no sound might have belonged to his linguistic
competence.
On the other hand, we know from Hakuin's own writings that he took a great
psychological interest in the kōan approach to Zen meditation and, in fact,
revived the entire kōan theory in Rinzai Zen Buddhism. We also know that he was
vastly educated, and his writings show erudition and, at the same time, vigor
and dynamism. Finally, we know that he first advocated the ancient Chinese kōan
‘Mu' for beginners, and only later in life introduced 'The Sound of One Hand'.
It is thus tempting to argue that Hakuin has not devised this kōan as his
personal, original contribution, but in the course of his experience or studies
came upon it as current in some stream of the oral or (less well-known,
forgotten or lost) textual transmission in Zen Buddhism, and that the image is
ultimately of Indian origin.
In
a closer analysis we see that there is a general basic ‘premise’ of the fact
that (only) the sound of two hands clapping can be heard, while the sound of a
single hand cannot. This commonplace observation is shared by the two Indian
sayings and Hakuin's kōan. What Hakuin did was to reformulate (and transform) a
commonplace saying as a Zen kōan; If (only) the sound of two hands clapping can
be heard, what is the sound of one hand? In this transformation, and in
the use (function) of the saying as a
kōan consists Hakuin's ingenuity and
contribution.
KAMIL
V. ZVELEBIL
UTRECHT
[1] Yampolsky, Philip B. (trans.), The Zen Master Hakuin: Selected
Writings. New York, Columbia University Press, 1977, p. 164.
[2] E.g., Hoover, Thomas, The
Zen Experience New York, 1980, p 230: “Initially he had advocated the “Mu”
koan for beginners, but late in life he came up with the famous “What is the
sound of one hand clapping?!” Cf. ib. p. 269, ftn. 18, “Hakuin's invention of
his own koans, which were kept secret and never published ...” etc. Cf. also
Joel Hoffmann, The Sound of the One Hand, Paladin, Frogmore, St. Albans,
1977, p. 208: “This koan was composed by the Japanese Zen Master
Hakuin...," etc.
[3] Cf. Folklore
(Calcutta) 15 (1974) 1.
[4] Jensen, Rev. Herman, A
Classified Collection of Tamil Proverbs, Madras-London, 1897.
[5] Ep. Ind. VIII, p.
143-46.
[6] Watters, T., Yuan
Chwang's Travels in India, Vol. II, 1905.
Bharatidasan song using the Tamil proverb that Kamil V. Zvelebil used in his 1987 JAOS article on Zen Koan.
பாரதிதாசன் பாடல்:
கூடித் தொழில் செய்தோர் கொள்ளைலா பம்பெற்றார்
வாடிடும் பேதத்தால் வாய்ப்பதுண்டோ தோழர்களே!
நாடிய ஓர் தொழில் நாட்டார் பலர் சேர்ந்தால்
கேடில்லை நன்மை கிடைக்குமன்றோ தோழர்களே!
சிறுமுதலால் லாபம் சிறிதாகும்; ஆயிரம்பேர்
உறுமுதலால் லாபம் உயருமன்றோ தோழர்களே!
அறுபதுபேர் ஆக்கும் அதனை ஒருவன்
பெறுவதுதான் சாத்தியமோ பேசிடுவீர் தோழர்களே!
பற்பலபேர் சேர்க்கை பலம்சேர்க்கும்; செய்தொழிலில்
முற்போக்கும் உண்டாகும் முன்னிடுவீர் தோழர்களே!
ஒற்றைக் கைதட்டினால் ஓசை பெருகிடுமோ
மற்றும் பலரால் வளம்பெறுமோ தோழர்களே!
ஒருவன் அறிதொழிலை ஊரான் தொழிலாக்கிப்
பெரும்பே றடைவதுதான் வெற்றி என்க தோழர்களே!
இருவர் ஒருதொழிலில் இரண்டுநாள் ஒத்திருந்த
சரிதம் அரிதுநம் தாய்நாட்டில் தோழர்களே!
நாடெங்கும் வாழ்வதிற் கேடொன்று மில்லைஎனும்
பாடம் அதைஉணர்ந்தாற் பயன்பெறலாம் தோழர்களே!
பீடுற்றார் மேற்கில் பிறநாட்டார் என்பதெல்லாம்
கூடித் தொழில்செய்யும் கொள்கையினால் தோழர்களே!
http://www.tamilvu.org/slet/l9100/l9100pd1.jsp?bookid=146&pno=25 |
