Book Title: Political History Of Ancient India
Author(s): Hemchandra Raychaudhari
Publisher: University of Calcutta

Previous | Next

Page 645
________________ 616 POLITICAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT INDIA who applied themselves to the study of the Great and Little "Vehicles". Persia (Po-la-sse ) itself contained two or three Sanghārāmas, with several hundred priests, who principally studied the teaching of the Little Vehicle according to the Sarvāstivādin school. The pătra of Sākya Buddha was in this country, in the King's palace. The Chinese pilgrim did not probably personally visit Persia. But no doubt need be entertained regarding the existence of Buddhist communities and Sanghārāmas or monasteries in Irān. Stein discovered a Buddhist monastery in "the terminal marshes of the Helmund”in Seistān.2 Mäni, the founder of the Manichæan religion, who was born in A.D. 215-16, at Ctesiphon in Babylonia, and began to preach his gospel probably in A.D. 242, shows unmistakable traces of Buddhist influence. In his book Shābūrqān (Shapurakhan) he speaks of the Buddha as a messenger of God. Legge and Eliot refer to a Manichæan treatise which has the form of a Buddhist Sūtra. It speaks of Māni as the Tathāgata and mentions Buddhas and the Bodhisattva. In Bunyiu Nanjio's Catalogue of the Chinese translation of the Buddhist Tripitaka, App., II, No, 4, we have reference to a Parthian prince who became a Buddhist śramana or monk before A.D. 148. In his History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, Dr. Vincent Smith refers to a picture of a fourarmed Buddhist saint or Bodhisattva in the guise of a Persian with black beard and whiskers, holding a thunderbolt (vajra) in his left hand, which has been found at a place called DandanUiliq in Turkistan. Such figures are undoubtedly the products of a type of Buddhism which must have developed in Iran, and enjoyed considerable popularity as late as the eighth century A.D. which is the date assigned by Dr. Smith to the fresco or distemper paintings on wood and plaster discovered at Dandan-Uiliq. It is difficult to say to what extent Buddhist literature made its influence felt in Western Asia. Sir Charles Eliot points 1 Beal, Records of the Western World, Vol. II. pp. 277-78 ; Watters, Yuan Chwang, II, 257. 2 Sir Charles Eliot, Hinduism and Buddhism, III, 3. 3 Ibid, p. 446; The Dacca University Journal, Feb. 1926, pp. 108, 111; JRAS, 1913, 69, 76, 81. 4 P. 310.

Loading...

Page Navigation
1 ... 643 644 645 646 647 648 649 650 651 652 653 654 655 656 657 658 659 660 661 662 663 664 665 666 667 668 669 670 671 672 673 674 675 676 677 678 679 680 681 682 683 684 685 686 687 688 689 690 691 692 693 694 695 696 697 698 699 700 701 702 703 704 705 706 707 708 709 710 711 712 713 714