BUDDHISM IN PERSIA
OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE SPREAD OF BUDDHISM into Persia is still at a primarily speculative
stage. This said, a summary of current views is relevant to any account of the history of
Buddhism. There has been little archaeological investigation of potential Buddhist sites
in modern Iran, and none at all, to my knowledge, further west into the Caucasus. The
documentation of literary evidence for the influence of Buddhist literature on Persian and
Arabic culture began in the 19th century. The assessment of the evidence for the influence
of Buddhist monuments, and for a knowledge of Buddhism in practice, has begun only in the
last few decades.
In the last century it was pointed out that the Buddhist Jataka stories, via a Hindu
recension under the title of the Pancatantra, were translated into Persian in the 6th
century at the command of the Zoroastrian king Khusru, and in the 8th century into Syriac
and Arabic, under the title Kalilag and Damnag. The Persian translation was later
translated into Greek, Latin, and Hebrew and was to form the basis of the collections of
stories known as Aesop’s Fables (complied in the 14th century by a Byzantine monk),
the stories of Sinbad, and the Arabian Nights. In the 8th century a life of the Buddha was
translated into Greek by St John of Damascus and circulated widely in Christian circles as
the story of Balaam and Josaphat. So popular was this story in medieval Europe that we
arrive at the irony of the figure of Josaphat, this name a corruption of
‘bodhisattva’, being canonized, by the 14th century, and worshipped as a saint
in the Catholic church. Rashid al-Din, a 13th century historian, records some eleven
Buddhist texts circulating in Persia in Arabic translations, amongst which the
Sukhavati-vyuha and Karanda-vyuha Sutras are recognizable. More recently portions of the
Samyutta and Anguttara-Nikayas, along with (parts of) the Maitreya-vyakarana, have been
identified in this collection.
Whilst the Persian and Arab cultures of the area clearly appreciated the edifying
stories of the Jataka book, no Arabic, Persian, or other Middle Eastern translation of
more scholastic literature is known to have survived. Accounts of Buddhism that we do have
in Persian literature occur in the works of historians and geographers, and bear a
distinctly anthropological cast. Relying upon anecdote, as such an approach was bound to
do, these writers knew of al Budd (the Buddha) as an Indian idol, al Budasf (the
Bodhisattva), and of the sumaniyyas (sramanas), one of two Indian sects (the other being
the Hindus), but did not draw them together into a coherent account of Buddhism proper.
Persian literature, especially that from eastern Persia, draws both imagery and locale
from Buddhist sites such as Merv and Balkh, although the interest in these derived
considerably from their mysterious and even romantic desolation. Knowledge of Buddhist
ritual connected with the stupa at Balkh is shown by the 10th century Persian historian,
Ibn al-Faqih, and Yaqut, a Syrian historian of the 13th century. That Persian knowledge of
Buddhism should be so slight and even then restricted to that from Central Asia and
Afghanistan is partly explicable in the light of the demise of Buddhism in India, a demise
for which militant Islamic conquest was itself largely responsible. Buddhist influence
upon Islam itself has been mooted through the mystical Sufi movements, at least one early
leader of which, Ibrahim ibn Adham (8th century), came from Balkh.
So much then for the Persian awareness of Buddhism. As for Buddhists themselves, any
movement into Persia appears to have taken place during two periods, the former possibly
beginning in the 3rd century BCE and lasting at least until countered by the eastward
movement of Islam from the 7th century onwards; the latter, the result of the Mongol
conquest of Iran in the early 13th century.
The first of these movements undoubtedly involved two mechanisms. Missionary activity
in the area probably began in the reign of Asoka. Legend records missions sent to Bactria
and Gandhara, both in modern Afghanistan, and there is no doubt that the flourishing
Buddhism of the area split over into Khurasan (in the north-east of modern Iran). Buddhism
also became established in Sindh and this would have served as a second point of
geographical contact with the Sassanian and later Muslim dynasties.
The second mechanism involved in this movement was trade. From the earliest times
Buddhism made great headway with the mercantile community in India (witness the great cave
monasteries lining the trading routes of western India), and this very likely involved
contact with traders from other countries. Branches of the ancient silk route passed
through Bactria and Gandhara en route to the Mediterranean Sea, and would have carried
Buddhist traders far westwards (as they also did eastwards). It is also known that as
early as the 2nd century BCE Indian traders, from western and southern India, and
doubtless Sind too, were regularly visiting ports in the Gulfand Arabia, and these
contacts probably explain the frequency of names in the region which contain elements such
as but, and also hind (Indian), and bahar (from the Sanskrit vihara ie a Buddhist
monastery). It certainly explains the conversion of the Maldive Islands to Buddhism in the
6th century.
Although Zoroastrianism was the dominant religious force in the area, Buddhism did make
headway there, as demonstrated by the coins of Peroz, son of Ardashir (226-41CE), which
present him as honouring the Zoroastrian and Buddhist faiths. However there is also
evidence that Buddhism met with resistance, for in the 3rd century a Zoroastrian
high-priest, Kartir, recorded in inscriptions that Buddhists (and others) in the Sassanian
kingdom (ie the pre-Muslim Persian dynasty) were being suppressed. Al-Biruni, writing in
the 11th century, claims that prior to this suppression, Khurasan, Persis, Irak, Mosul,
and the country up to the frontier of Syria were Buddhist, and that the resultant retreat
of Buddhist eastwards explains their concentration in the area of Balkh.
Concrete evidence for the presence of Buddhism in Persia is slim. Rock-cut cave
complexes at Chehelkhaneh and Haidari on the Gulf have been tentatively identified as
Buddhist monasteries, built in the same style that is ubiquitous in both India and Central
Asia to serve the local trading community. Unfortunately no explicit evidence survives to
substantiate this identification. Persian tradition describes a powerful dynastic family
of the 8th and 9th centuries, originating in Balkh, and with the name Barmak. Arab authors
recognized this as the hereditary title of the ‘high priest’ of a temple in that
city known as the Nawbahar. In fact barmak is derived from the Sanskrit term pramukha,
literally ‘chief’, the term for the head of a Buddhist monastery. This
interpretation is confirmed by the name Naebahar itself, which is a corruption of the
Sanskrit for nava-vihara, ‘new monastery’. The diffusion of the name Nawbahar to
sites in Persia, the greatest concentration in north-eastern Iran, and spreading both west
and south from there, had led to speculation that the nava-vihara of Balkh (a known site,
mentioned independently by Chinese pilgrims) had been the centre of a western-oriented
Buddhist sect, overseen by the Barmakid family and acting as their powerbase, albeit
shrinking, in negotiations with the ruling Abbasid dynasty based in Baghdad. It seems
likely that the Persian Nawbahar system had been effectively suppressed by the time of the
Islamic conquest of the area, such that specifically Buddhist associations with these
sites were not known to them. Even so, the theory has also been advanced that the Nawbahar
monasteries of Persia served as the model for the Islamic madrasa, on the grounds that
they retained their function as centres of learning after their specifically Buddhist
function was removed or suppressed. (This theory is circumstantially supported by the
reputation of such monasteries as Nalanda in India as centres of both secular and
religious learning.) The Buddhists of Sindh, which was sporadically ruled by Buddhist
kings until the 7th century, appear to have been able to negotiate a stable and friendly
modus vivendi with their Muslim conquerors, and again this may have been through some
connection with the nava-vihara in Balkh - there being sites of the same name there. We
should not assume that Buddhism disappeared from Persia as a result of religious
persecution, for there is evidence that Muslim rulers showed tolerance towards other
religious groups.
The second wave of movement westwards was powered by the Mongol conquests of the early
13th century which led to the establishment of the Mongol Ilkhanid dynasty in Persia from
1256 onwards. The Mongol Khans were Buddhist, of a Tantric character, and patronized
Buddhism in their kingdom for the remainder of the century, until Ghazan Khan was
converted to Islam in 1295. This brief period of patronage witnessed an enthusiastic
programme of temple building, in Maragheh the capital in north-eastern Persia, and
elsewhere, but was curtailed by Ghazan’s order that all Buddhist temples be destroyed
or converted to use as mosques. Possible physical evidence for this are two further sets
of rock-cut caves, at Rasatkhaneh and Varjuvi, both sites near the old Mongol capital of
Maragheh. Both conform to the well-known pattern of Buddhist caves complexes, but have
been frescoes removed and have been converted for use as mosques. Later attempts by
Buddhists to convert Uldjaitu Khan (1305-16) to Buddhism are witness to the survival of
Buddhism in Persia after this date, although it appears to have disappeared by the
mid-14th century. The presence to this day of stupa-type buildings ornamented with flags
in Dhagestan in the Caucasus may also reflect Mongol influence of this period.
Source: Andrew Skilton (1994), A Concise History of Buddhism,
British Library, England.
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Computer typesetting: Lydia Quang Nhu