‘Like Embers Hidden in Ashes, or Jewels Encrusted In Stone’: Rāhul Sāṅktyāyan, Dharmānand KosambĪ And Buddhist Activity In Colonial India

Abstract

Two of the most important modern Indian Buddhist pioneers are the polyglot explorer and Marxist revolutionary, Rāhul Sāṅktyāyan (1893–1963), and the Pali scholar and Gandhian nationalist, Dharmānand Kosambī (1876–1947). Although best known as scholars of Buddhism, it is their lesser-known personal lives—namely, their political involvement in anti-colonial efforts, social reform projects, and travels abroad—that are of primary focus in this study. Through an examination of their activities and writings, this essay reveals the methods they employed and the networks of support they utilized in order to propagate Buddhism. In particular, it focuses on two features common to both of their lives: first, their relations with transnational Buddhist organizations and Euro-American and other Asian intellectuals, and second, their collaborative efforts with Indian elites whom they shared similar social, educational and national concerns. These two factors, I argue, were essential to their reconfiguration of a modern Indian Buddhism that was relevant to contemporary Indian concerns.

Notes

 1. There are, however, some exceptions to this trend, the most notable of which are Zelliot (1979), Aloysius (1998), and Ahir (1989).

 2. There are numerous examples of figures with a wide variety of non-Buddhist religious affiliations supporting Buddhist activity in India at this time. See Ahir (1989, 159–163).

 3. This was eventually published in 1950 in the Harvard Oriental Series with Henry Clarke Warren.

 4. M. Kosambi (2010) has translated a selection of his works into English. A complete bibliography of Kosambī's works is also available in M. Kosambi (2010, 413–417).

 5. An English translation of this play is found in M. Kosambi (2010, 358–408).

 6. English, however, was not one of these.

 7. For instance, Kosambī contended that the Buddhist stress on non-violence was not responsible for India's downfall (this was a popular position at the time), that the Buddha (and Mahavira) was not a vegetarian, and that the driving force behind Gautama's renunciation was not the Four Passing Sights, but his disenchantment with political violence (M. Kosambi, 2010, 33–36).

 8. I am grateful to Laurence Cox for pointing out that this kind of political critique was in fashion at the time among those figures who eventually founded the third communist International and later started revolutions in Russia and Germany.

 9. Birla, who was an orthodox Hindu, financed the construction and restoration of multiple MBS Buddhist viharas across India. It is important to note, however, that Birla conceived of a Buddhist revival in India as part of a Hindu renaissance, and not as a distinct tradition.

10. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Kosambī wrote a series of essays strongly criticizing Rajendra Prasad's (later, the first President of India) and the Indian historian, Dr S. V. Ketkar's views of Buddhism (for brief discussions of these debates, see M. Kosambi, 2010, 16–17, 32–33).

11. Sāṅktyāyan visited Tibet four times (1929–1930, 1934, 1936, 1938) in search of manuscripts relevant to the study of Indian history. Amongst his most important discoveries there were a large number of Sanskrit manuscripts dating from the eleventh to thirteenth century CE, some of which he was able to photograph or copy by hand. These included the complete manuscripts of the Pramāṅavārttika-bhā ā, a subcommentary on Dharmakīrti's work on logic and Asaṅga's Yogācārabhūmi. According to Andrew Skilton (personal communication, February 13, 2013), photographic negatives of around half of Sāṅktyāyan's collection is currently housed in Patna. Also noteworthy was what was then one of the oldest known versions of Saraha's Dohakośa (composed in Apabhraśa) and the biography of Dharmasvāmin (Chag lo-ts-ba Chos-rje-dpal), a Tibetan pilgrim who visited India during the thirteenth century. Numerous translations and critical editions of these manuscripts based on Sāṅktyāyan's collection have since been published by the Bihar and Orissa Research Society and K. P. Jayaswal Research Institute. Although Sāṅktyāyan also published extensively on a variety of Buddhist topics (see Ram, 1994), very few of his works are available in English. A notable exception is Sāṅk tyāyan (1984).

12. On Bodhānanda, see Ahir (1989, 65–67).

13. The most important of these friendships were with the Bihari lawyer, Rajendra Prasad (1884–1963), later to become the first President of India; the Indologist K. P. Jayaswal (1881–1937), who was the director of the Bihar Research Society; and the Venerable Devapriya Valinsinha (1904–1968), who later became the General Secretary of the MBS from 1933–1968.

14. On the interactions between these figures, with a central focus on Chophel, see Stoddard (1985, chap. 6).

15. Bhatācārya (2005, 205–215), has identified 148 books and 71 articles credited to Sāṅktyāyan.

16. According to one of his disciples, the Indian Buddhist monk, Jagdiś Kāśyap (1908–1976), Sāṅktyāyan had dismissed Kāśyap's interest in meditation as something best to be done in old age whereas the present was better spent in missionary work (Kāśyap 1961, 8).