Casting the Buddha: A monumental history of Buddhism in India

In a context when Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been emphasizing how Buddha’s teachings could offer solutions to greatest challenges confronting the modern world, a book on Buddha which is set to hit the markets very soon mentions this message of peace. The book “Casting the Buddha: A Monumental History of Buddhism in India” by Shashank Shekhar Sinha traces 2500 years of history of Buddha and Buddhism. The book mentions how it got linked with soft power diplomacy, Ambedkar and identity politics, Tibetan Buddhists, and refugee issues, in the post-independence period and how such linkages manifest in the construction of modern buildings and artefacts. Even His Holiness the Dalai Lama has praised the book by writing “Places (Buddhist), Monuments, in a social, geographical, and spiritual context.”

READ: Book extract — Casting the Buddha: A Monumental History of Buddhism in India

This is the first book in more than the last 50 years to study Buddhist monuments on a subcontinental scale. A striking feature of the book is that it links philosophical and doctrinal developments with architecture. It shows how buildings, sculptures and artefacts evolve in relation to changes within the Buddhist faith and its rituals. This evolution is not just limited to developments within the Buddhist faith, but also in Hinduism, Jainism, popular cults and other renunciatory and ascetic traditions. All these make the exploration of monuments an engaging experience. As Himanshu Prabha Ray, an expert and former chairperson of the National Monuments Authority, points out in her endorsement, the book “breathes life into Buddhist monuments”.

"Casting the Buddha" presents a history of the Buddha, Buddhists and Buddhism through monuments and artefacts, over a period of 2500 plus years. It not only discusses major structures like stupas, viharas, mahaviharas, but also artefacts including sculptures, images, votive stupas, pillars, tablets, paintings, tablets, miniature images and shrines and steles. In short, as the author says, the book examines “the different material forms –direct, symbolic or extended – in which the Buddha was cast”. For Shashank Shekhar Sinha, monuments are not just physical spaces frozen and time in space. He shows how the lives of the monuments closely resonated with those of the people and communities surrounding them – monks, laity, kings, traders, guilds, occupational groups, landlords, agriculturists, and villagers, and how such entities gave different meanings to the Buddhist structures and artefacts.

People and stories surrounding monuments interest common people in a big way. As tangible objects of the past, monuments constitute a critical source for writing, studying, and understanding history. They also form one of the dominant mediums through which common people consume history in their day-to-day lives. However, despite their immense potential as a source of study of the past or for the reception of history in public, monuments have not been systematically studied. So far, they have mostly been understood through the prism of art and architecture. By foregrounding the importance of monuments in history, Shashank Shekhar Sinha makes a very pertinent contribution to the discipline and its understanding in the public. This is what Sinha also attempts to do in his first book in the Magnificent Heritage series published by Pan Macmillan India, Delhi Agra Fatehpur Sikri: Monuments, Cities and Connected Histories (2021). In Casting the Buddha, he makes his points very authoritatively and forcefully while suggesting a new, more inclusive framework for the study of monuments.

Casting the Buddha contains 11 chapters organized under three thematic and overlapping sections. The first section, ‘Monuments, Artefacts and Connected Histories’, brings together five chapters which chart the history of Buddhist monuments from the time of the Buddha (6th–5th centuries BCE) to the 12th–13th centuries, popularly considered the period of decline of Buddhism in India. The constituent chapters, as His Holiness, the Dalai Lama says in his endorsement, place the monuments in a social, geographical, and spiritual context. These chapters not only discuss the construction of new monuments but modifications and extensions to existing ones as well.

The second section on the ‘UNESCO World Heritage Sites’ consists of four detailed chapters on four such sites in India—Bodh Gaya, Sanchi, Ajanta, and Nalanda. This section, as scholar Susan Huntington says, “adds much needed depth” to the study of monuments. The third section, ‘The Return of the Buddha’, consists of two chapters which talk about the comeback of the Buddha in the 19th and 20th centuries. The first chapter in this section recalls the compositions, translations, debates, and discussions, both in Europe and colonial India which together with archaeological excavations led to the comeback of the Buddha and Buddhism.

The last chapter, ‘Buddhism 2.0’, highlights how the Buddha and Buddhism get linked with soft power diplomacy, Ambedkar and identity politics, and Tibetan Buddhists and refugee issues, in the post-independence period and how such linkages manifest in the construction of modern buildings and artefacts. Also, how the thrust on tourism and the development of a dedicated circuit has led to changes in Buddhist landscape and monumental heritage.