Empire: World History - 128. The Life of the Buddha

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

India was the forgotten heart of the ancient world. For a millennium and a half, from about 250 BC to 1200 AD, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilisation, creating around it a vast empire of ideas, an ‘Indosphere’ where its influence was predominant. During this period, the rest of Asia was the willing recipient of a mass-transfer of Indian soft power. Indian art, religions, technology, astronomy, music, dance, literature, mathematics, and mythology blazed a trail across the world, along a Golden Road that stretched from the Red Sea to the Pacific, connecting different places and ideas to one another. Listen over the next five episodes as William and Anita tell the story of Buddhism and how it travelled along the Golden Road, starting today with the life of Siddharta Gautama, an aristocrat born in the 5th century BC. At the age of 29, he left behind his life of luxury and sought to understand the real world. In so doing, he changed the course of history. At the age of 35 he meditated for 49 days under a sacred pipal tree and eventually he reached enlightenment. We know him as the Buddha. Pre-order William's book below: UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Golden-Road-Ancient-India-Transformed/dp/140886441X India: https://www.amazon.in/dp/140886441X/ Australia: Available 17th September 2024 US: Available Spring 2025 For bonus episodes, ad-free listening, reading lists, book discounts, a weekly newsletter, and a chat community. Sign up at https://empirepod.supportingcast.fm/ Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Anouska Lewis Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Duremberg. It's a very exciting day. I'm very, very, very, genuinely. It is quite exciting, actually. Very excited.

because first of all I've had to sort of keep a lid on the fact that I had a sneak peek to your new book. It's so good. It's so good. Honestly, you are in for such a treat, when is it out? When's it actually coming out? I am so sending you half the Royal Disney to. What's it coming out? It's coming out of September. September? Okay. So this is, I mean, I've been budgering, William, because it is such a work of genius saying, please can we talk about it? Just a little bit, just a little bit, just a tiny, tiny, tiny bit.

And I mean, it's very kind of you to lift the veil a little bit for us, because otherwise, I mean, frankly, you're going to have an earbleed because I'm not going to stop going on about it. But we are going to be doing a little mini-series, and this is all through the kindness of William and my unutterably awful badgering to just get a little sneak peek of this extraordinary book, which I think, just one girl's opinion, may reframe the way we think about global trade and ancient India. It is that exciting, ladies and gentlemen. But this mini-series, this tiny little curtain veil lift that we're doing, we're going to be talking about Buddhism, which is such a, I mean, it's such a beating heart of the new book, isn't it? It is. So this book is called The Golden Road. And the reason that my publishers have let me talk about it six months before this book is actually published.

It's ridiculous, isn't it? Nobody really allows this. It's very naughty. But the reason they allowed it is that we're just revealing the cover today. And if you were to go to Amazon, not only is the cover up there, but you can pre-order the book as from today. Can you pre-order the book now? Oh, so looking at it now, it is, well, first of all, William Dalrymple, very good. We know that's the right book.

A superb historian with a visceral understanding of India. That's just one of the accolades and one of the many that this book is going to get and has already got. But this is a picture, where does it date from? It's a circular road or a depiction of a road with people. houses inside it and on top of it and sort of these very what looked like ancient Indian miniature people sitting either on the road or in the houses. What does it represent? So the cover design represents the ancient Indian conception of the world, which had Mount Meru at the centre, and then is it six or seven oceans radiating out from there and all the different lands

and Jambud Vipa, the land of the rose apple tree in the centre. So this particular one thing is a Jane cosmological map, but it shows how Indians conceived the world in the early centuries. And the book is about, well, this podcast is on empires, and this is about an empire of ideas, how ancient India, rather like what ancient Greece did in Europe, what ancient India did for Asia and for much of the rest of the world. And between about 250 BC and 1200 AD, India was an incredibly confident exporter of its own civilization, creating around it this empire of ideas, which developed into something which I call the Indosphere, this tangible cultural area. And from this, you get this massive transfer of Indian soft power in religion, in art, in dance, in music, Textiles, technology, math, medicine, mythology, language and literature.

When it comes to language, I mean, just to give us a little bit of an idea of how, you know, this spread through the bloodstream, are we talking about Sanskrit? Because there is a wonderful way that Sanskrit was described in your book, that the language of the gods in the world of men. I mean, is that the blood through which it's carried? That's not me, actually. That is borrowed from a wonderful scholar called Sheldon Pollock. and that's how he describes Sanskrit in one of his extraordinary books. But this idea that there's this cosmopolis, as Pollock puts it, that stretches all the way from Kandahar in Afghanistan, which is the Sanskrit Gandhara, all the way through India, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia,

right through to Singapore, which is the sort of Sanskrit-Singaporea. And so, for example, in that area, the name Java, which still sits on our map today, is actually the San Francisco. Sanskrit Yavad Vipa, meaning an island shaped like a yawa or a barley. Gosh. A grade of Bali. And in that area, you get this extraordinary influence of Sanskrit and Indian ideas. So, you know, today even in the heart of Bangkok, the Zayotia, which is named after Iodia, Lord

Rams capital in the Ramayana. Or think of the national airline of Indonesia. Garuda is named after Vishnu's vehicle. Vishnu's Mount. Yeah. Exactly that. So it's this idea which we've kind of forgotten, that just like in Europe, you get the ideas of Archimedes and Aristotle and Plato circling out, ideas of mathematics, ideas of architecture, ideas of the state of the republic, so that, you know, you go to Sweden or Iceland or Edinburgh, and you have all these buildings that are basically modelled on the Acropolis. In the same way in Asia, India is this force that's radiating out ideas.

And so for a thousand years, you get these pioneering merchants, astronomers, astrologers, scientists, mathematicians. And in the forefront of this are all these Indic religions, Vedic, Shavite and Vashivar, Hinduism, and then all the different forms of Buddhism. Okay. So, I mean, we should explain that, you know, Shavite and Vashnava, their followers of Shiva, who is the out of the triumvirate of Hindu gods, is the destroyer. He does Lord of the Dance, Nataraja, you know, that's sort of one of the three. You've got Vishnu, who is the man

who perpetuates life and he has this spinning chakra on his finger. Brahma, who is the creator, who carries a lotus on his hand. I mean, can I just say when you're listing all of those things, I'm just trying to get them all in. I mean, you're saying what mathematics, sculpture, medicine, astronomy, astrologers, you do sound like a goodness gracious. You do sound like a goodness gracious. me sketch where everything is Indian. It's Sanjeev Basque again. Role family. Hello, Sanjee.

Hi, Sanjib. Indian. But I mean, you are crediting India with an awful lot. And what did you do to kind of establish those things? So I think the Sanjiv Basque sketch comes from the frustration of Indians who know, for example, that the number system that we all use, that everyone in Europe calls Arabic numbers, in fact, originates in India. Indians know that half the world's population today live in areas where Indian ideas of religion and culture were once dominant.

If you think of Buddhism as an Indian religious system, which takes over not just China and becomes that, for various points in history, the principal religion in China, but also takes over great suways of Southeast Asia. The fact that the largest Hindu temple in the world is in Cambodia, and call what? the only temple you can still, you can see from space because it's so enormous. It's a kilometer wide. And so I put together all these different things that in a sense, everyone's always known about. They've been hiding in plain sight and connecting, you know, for example, the Buddhism of Sri Lanka, China, Korea and Japan, the Sanskrit place names of Burma and Thailand, the murals and sculptures of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata that you see in Laos or Cambodia, or the Hindu rituals that you see

in the temples of Bali. And I'm talking about this whole area, this Indosphere, and the trade routes that linked it, which I call the Golden Road, of the title of the book. I mean, the Golden Road is, first of all, beautiful title, and also, you know, this golden thread

that links all these thoughts to this very ancient history. Just on that, you know, the Thailand thing, even to people who are Indian and who get it drilled into their heads that, you know, probably everything is Indian. Like, you know, me as a parent. Role family. Indian.

My son was in Thailand and he came home and he was just completely wide-eyed. He said, Mommy, they've got all of the pictures of the Ramayan. They've got all these sculptures of Lord Rama and Lachshman. And, you know, he recognised them, but it was just astonished to find them in a country that... You don't expect to find them. Exactly. No. And there was, you know, not a Hindu country in his mind at all. Maybe just say what I think in ancient Greece and ancient India have in common.

And these are ideas that we're so familiar with for Greece, for Europe. The idea that these countries come up very early with a set of profound answers to the big questions of what the world is, how it operates, why we are here, and how we should live our lives. And India comes up with its own set of answers for this, which not only take over through Buddhism, China and Southeast Asia, but spread out of vast areas. So that today, anyone that's looking at this through a mobile phone, just look at the keys in front of you. Those are numerals developed in Ashokas India, transformed in their passage through Europe. But anyway, so it's replacing ancient India in the heart of our thoughts as the engine, a cultural engine in the early classical world. Something that's really been forgotten, not in India, but in Europe and much of the West. So this book is an attempt to set the balance right again.

If my dad was still alive today, this would be his favorite podcast. It would be on the shelf marked, I told you so. I wish he had many exhibits. This would be the number one. Let's start with something that we desperately need at the moment. You're saying about a philosophy, an ideology, a way of living your life. I mean, God knows we could do with some peace right now. The world has never felt more turbulent.

and dreadful. It does feel very, very turbulent at the moment, doesn't it? It really does. Doesn't it? Yeah. So, I mean, Buddhism, let's go back and back, back, back, back, back. Buddhism has always been equated with peace. So, I mean, where does that all begin? So I think what I'd love to do in the next five episodes is really just trace this one thread of the three main threads in the book. The three stories I turn this book, one is the spread of Buddhism, secondly, the spread of Hinduism to Southeast Asia, the spread of Indian numbers and mathematics to the West. And I think just as a little taster tell the first part of the story of the spread of Buddhism as far as China. And it would be very, very nice if we could just, yeah, focus on that story. And the story begins with the birth of

the Buddha. So we're talking fifth century BC? Is that the time scale that we're thinking of? Still disputed. And there are various different theories. But now the weight of evidence does seem, yeah, to point to the 5th century BC, which incidentally is the same sort of time as probably Confucius is writing in China and Zoroaster is coming up with his ideas in Persia. So this is one of those moments in human history when suddenly ideas are changing across the board and people are coming up with new ways of looking at the world and new ways of understanding how to live it. And in India in particular, this is a world going through rapid religious and philosophical change, partly due to the new technologies which have emerged, particularly the iron plough and improved

weaponry, which leads to a dramatic shift in the way people live, transforming India society from a kind of wandering nomad pastoralism to settled farming, and with it the rise of cities, trade and a highly stratified social structure. So all these new things are happening in society, which has been largely pastoral people moving their flocks and so on, is now turning into an urban society with the whole set of new problems that develop when human beings live in close proximity to one another. And you have rapid religious change at the same time provoked by this rapid social change. So, I mean, just to give people an idea of what was going,

I'm sitting in the UK, you're sitting in India, but this period, this 5th century BC, is the time of the, Iron Age, isn't it, in Britain, when people were also discovering rudimentary tools, tribes who were becoming more coalesced and organised. You were having sort of the start of a little pockets of organised civilisation. And all those wonderful hill forts with those deep ditches that you can climb over today. Maiden Castle is probably a bit later, but Hambledon Hill in Dorset is dating from this period. And again, yeah, you have a beginning of urbanisation or certainly, you know, settlements of lots of people gathered together on a hilltop protected by palisades and ditches and so on.

Yeah, and those sort of Iron Age round houses, you know, they sort of round thatched. Nice sort of smoke pottering out at the top, all those pictures, exactly. Yes, exactly. Okay. So let's now sort of go back to India. You talked about the new technologies. You talked about, you know, how that moved thought, but in which direction did it move thought? So you have all of these new things that people are able to use to farm with, to have, you know, an establishment of a class, if you like. If you've got tools, then you've got those who work and those who reap the rewards of the work. Invariably, that seems to happen. So what happens to society and thought as a result?

So in India, characteristically, hundreds of new ideas and hundreds of new religions begin to circulate. There's one scholar who says that around this time there as many as 66 new ideas. heterodox creeds and religion spreading, and there were probably many more. The oldest and the most venerable is Vedic Hinduism, which is the earliest sort of layer of this amazing sort of layer cake that Hinduism is, and the Rig Veda, which dates from thousands BC, much disputed the date, but very, very early, advocates far sacrifices and animal sacrifices conducted by Brahmins according to very strict rituals. And within the Hindu field, you're getting alternative ideas arriving in a series of books called the Upanishads, which is the kind of the new teachings,

centering on interiority and meditation and looking within yourself rather than to rituals. And then you get these other kind of wackier ascetic cults where people are going out into the jungle and into the deserts and really punishing their bodies. And the most prominent of those are the Jains. And this character, Mahavira, who's a rough contemporary of the Buddha, maybe a little bit, a generation or two earlier. Mahavira is an aristocrat who disillusioned by this courtly life goes on a very austere journey of self-punishment

and believes that only by punishing his body can he escape. the cycle of rebirth. And one of the early Jane texts talks about, austerity is my sacrificial fire. And my life is the place where the fire is kindled. Mental and physical effort are the ladle for the ablation. And my body is the dung fuel for the fire. My actions, my firewood. I can offer up an ablation praised by the wise seers consisting of my restraint, effort and calm. So that's the new ideas that have just arrived when the Buddha is a young man? The name Buddha will be familiar around the world because, you know, Mahavira may be less so, but if you travel around India to Jane temples, Jane temples are often enormous and, very gorgeous, you know, beautiful,

but you'll have this statue of a youth bare-chested, I mean, he's normally a youth, bare-chested, cross-legged, Mahavira, you know, the perfect specimen of humanity. There is this weird thing isn't there, across the world, though, of mortification of the flesh to give you a higher plane of existence? I mean, it's not just restricted to the east. Well, I think it begins here. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find examples of mortifying ascetics before the Buddha and Mahavira. This is a new idea then, and the idea that you reject this new cosmopolitan urban life with all the riches and pleasures. In a sense, you have to have those pleasures and that sophistication for rejecting it to be possible, if you see what I mean. You need one to have the other.

And the Buddha is like Mahavir, the founder of the Jains, a young prince named Sadata, Gartama, Sakyamuni. And Sakyamuni means of the Sakya clan, which is cousins of the Scythians who we met in our Persian series. Do you remember Cyrus going chasing off into the step and being killed by the Scythians? Well, another branch of the Syrians comes to India and settles down beside the Ganges. And it is from a particular clan of the Sakhirs who run a small kingdom called Kappalavastu on the border of India and Nepal in the 5th century BC that this young man, this extraordinary young man, is born. And also, you know, always depicted the young Buddha is the perfect youth, much like the figures of Mahavir that you see around India and beyond. you know, he's accomplished, he's clever, he's beautiful, he has everything going for him, but for him it is kind of, I mean, when do we start realizing that it's not enough to have all

of these tragedies? So again, I mean, this is that famous thing, you know, the 30-year-old youth, whether it's Jesus or so on, we know that the Buddha, Katama, was a young prince at the age of 29 when he becomes disillusioned with his coseted life in the palace and aided by a faithful, servant, he breaks out. And his father has done his best to keep him away from the awful things of reality. And so when he leaves the palace with the servant, he encounters for the first time, at least in the mythology of this story, suffering, old age, disease and death, things that everyone has made sure he never sees. The stories are told, there's a high wall around the palace

and he can't see over the wall sometimes, you know, when these stories are told in folklore ways, you know, that he hears the sound of crying, but he doesn't know what it is because he's never seen pain or, you know, he's that insulated by the high wall. But then at 29, he goes across over the wall. What effect does it have on him? What does it do to him? So he's distraught and suddenly disillusioned with his comfortable and privileged life. And he abandons both his father's kingdom and his pregnant wife, which is the thing that we find a bit difficult today to stomach when you think about it. And he sets off on this lonely quest to understand, and the roots of suffering in an attempt to see if he can escape it.

And that is the thing that propels to this idea of escaping suffering. How do you avoid suffering in this world? And he starts off by following the path set by Mahavira and other Hindu ascetics, renouncing worldly attachments, retreating to the wilderness, adopting the life of a wandering yogi under the tutelage of a whole variety of different teachers. and he tries this path of extreme asceticism and rigorous penance. My body became extremely lean, said the Buddha, according to one early account of his life. When I thought I would touch the skin of my stomach, I actually took hold of my spine.

It's a wonderful image. We've seen it. You and I were together. Do you remember when we, I think it was in Lahore. We've had the privilege of travelling around the famished Buddha, which is a which is one of the most affecting statues I have ever seen in my life. It's a gorgeous statue. It's gorgeous, but deeply disturbing.

So if you're one of the people who likes to Google while you listen, just look up the famished Buddha. But it is of a man, again, sitting cross-legged. He is so thin. You can make out every sinew and bone in his body. His eyes are hollowed out as if it's a death mask. And he's sitting in meditation. And that, you know, corresponds to the, I touched my stomach. and I tried to touch, thought of touching the skin on my stomach and I touched my spine.

It's just one of the most extraordinary sculptures. That sixth century, that sixth century AD, so it's a thousand years after he actually performed this. Right. And it's in this wonderful half-Roman, half-Indian style made by Gandhara and monks in the Himalayas in the 5th or 6th century AD, possibly earlier. Some people say third, third, fourth. but anyway, the early centuries AD. And the point of this, which is what some people don't understand it,

is that the Buddha's enlightenment comes not when he's starving himself, but when he accepts a spoonful of milky pudding offered to him by a devotee to rebuild his strength. And it's at that point that he realizes that he must follow what he calls the middle path, the way of moderation between extremes of self-torture. and sensual indulgence between worldliness and asceticism. And that also becomes a central tenet of Buddhism, even very modern monks. So just so happens, right?

I live in London on the outskirts of London. One of my neighbours used to be a Buddhist monk. He sadly passed away. So this is in memory of my lovely, lovely friend Joe who died. I've never heard this story. Yeah, no, Joe, amazing. So he was a fabulous florist in swinging 60s, London, doing all the flowers for the Palladium. So, you know, living the showbiz life, I mean, people like Yul Brynha were his best mate.

And then suddenly he goes off, he discovers Buddhism. He goes to Sri Lanka to perfect his Buddhism. He goes and lives in a cave where monkeys steal his food and just sort of lives the life of an ascetic. And when he comes out, you know, the thing, again, he says, you know, he walked the path of the Buddha. It was people giving him Dana, you know, just food to eat. It was the charity. And right until he died, it was like, you know, there were a few of us on the street who looked after him. but he just sort of felt that he was still living the Buddhist way

when we dropped round a pork pie or something. He just and regale us with these stories of how this was the Buddhist way. Lovely man, lovely, lovely man. But that sort of the enlightenment, I mean, I like to think it's sort of linked to then kindness, the very best of humanity is where you'll find the truth somewhere. That's exactly the idea. So, yes, to sort of recap, he's 35,

he's been sitting, starving himself under a sacred peopletree, meditating without moving for 49 days. And that moment when he accepts the milky sweet offered to him is when he achieves enlightenment. And with it, freedom from greed, hate, and delusion. And he realizes that this moment of Bodhi or awakening is derived not from punishing the body, but instead from simply learning the way to extinguish desire. That's his great revelation. And I've got a little reading, which is not from my book, but which is from the the first sermon as recorded in the Pali Souta. Can I do a little? I'd love it. Yeah, let's do that. And then we'll go for a break. Yeah, let's do that.

So this is, he travels from Gaia, where he gets his enlightenment, now Bodgha, in his honour. And he travels to Sanat, which is just outside the holy city of Varanasi, just inland from the Ganges. And he sits down and he gives his first sermon. And these are the messages that he gives. He says, there are two opposite extremes that must not be entered into. They are indulgence in sensual pleasure and self-mortification. Between these two lies the middle way, which, if followed, bestows peace, higher wisdom, enlightenment, and ultimately extinction for those attachments which obstruct such a state. The middle way is like a road having eight parts, outlook and aspiration, speech and action, livelihood and effort, mindfulness and

concentration, which must all be conducive to the extinction of suffering. Suffering is an immutable fact. It is manifest in the following forms, birth, aging, disease, dying, involvement in the unpleasant, separation from the pleasant, non-attainment of the desirable I've seen the significance of the existence of this fact of suffering, have recognised the need to understand suffering, and I have made it understood to myself. Join us after the break. Welcome back. We left you in part one with a reading. I think we'll start with a reading. It's an early Buddhist text. And then William, maybe you can explain where this is from and why this is important. formerly when you were a householder, were you skilled at playing the lute?

Yes, Lord. When the strings of the lute were too taught, was it tuneful and fit for playing? Certainly not, Lord. And when they were slack, was the lute tuneful and fit for playing? No, Lord. But when the strings were neither too taught

nor too slack, but were keyed to an even pitch, was your lute, tuneful and fit for playing? Yes, Lord. Even so, is the Dharma that I propose. That's lovely. So that's from the Vinaya Pittaker, which is an early Buddhist text, giving the Buddha's own

explanation of his approach to a new disciple called Sona. And the Buddha then embarks on his mission. He goes out across North India, gathering disciples, wandering, wandering, remaining always on the move, except during the monsoon when he takes a rainbreak up in the Himalayas. And he teaches his fundamental ideas that everything is impermanent and that desire brings only the most fleeting of pleasures. And he teaches that the material world is ultimately an illusion, a dream from which everyone must sooner or later awake. Material pleasures, he says, are like a man who dreams of a fine house with fine gardens and luxurious delights. Yet when he awakens, all of it vanishes.

distinctions of wealth and poverty, noble and common, are like a dream. So this is, I mean, this is what a lot of people associate with Buddhism even today, that this is all an illusion. You know, everything is an illusion and it is all about the struggle for higher consciousness. But Maya is also a concept in ancient Hinduism. Krishna talks about Maya as well in the Mahabharata, that, you know, none of this is real. He has conversations with Arjun where Arjun is fretting over killing his kinsman, And then Krishna comes down and says, just don't worry, none of this is real.

This is all Maya. This is all an illusion. So, yeah, so the roots are similar, tap roots, aren't they? Yes, I think you can exaggerate the distinction between, I mean, today we have these very clear idea that there's one religion called Hinduism and there's another religion called Buddhism and either you're one or the other. That's not at all how things were in early India. This is very much growing out of the same common culture compost, if you like, of the same

ideas and Buddhism is full of Vedic ideas. However much he's rejecting the ritual side of the Vedas, he's using the language of the Vedas to express himself. So the 12-spoked wheel that becomes the symbol of Buddhism appears in the Rig Veda. And I think it's a great mistake to see Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism as, you know, three separate watertight compartments. They run between each other. Or even as an apostasy against Hinduism, you know, the daddy religion, it's not like that.

They're all sort of, you know, in the same family. Scholars today often argue that in many ways the thing that the Buddha is most strongly reacting against is actually Jainism. It's that extreme asceticism. That's the immediate sort of popular, fashionable cult that he's growing up against. Well, we should say what Jainism is then. Mahavira. But the asceticism is you don't eat meat. You don't eat anything that can give life. so you don't eat, you know, sort of root vegetables, carrots, potatoes, anything like that,

because something can grow out of it. Very, very strict janes, even today in India, you'll see they wander in robes of white, wearing masks on their faces in case they breathe in a bug or something. And there's an awful lot about sort of self-denial as well. Absolutely. And then there's this thing called Salikana, which I've come across and written about in my book, nine lives, where many jane ascetics at the end of their... lives will richly starve themselves to death. They'll slowly do one item of food less each day. So,

you know, first they'll give up dahl, then they'll give up rice and so on, and then they'll give up milk and so on. And the Buddha's idea is that that is unnecessarily harsh, that you don't need to punish your body in order to get enlightenment, but nor do you indulge in the full sensual pleasures of urban living and the palace. Remember, again, is the world at the Kama Sutra is about to come out of. So that on one hand is wrong. Asseticism on the other is not the right way. The Buddha says, you've got to find your own way between the two. And the Buddha expresses this message, his Dharma, his idea of the moral path in language of remarkable emotional simplicity and clarity. And he doesn't use the ritual Sanskrit of the Brahmins, but he uses the

ordinary Prachrit vernacular spoken by ordinary people in the streets. Prachry. Now, to I've not heard that. Tell me what Prachry it is. Prachian just literally means the vernacular, the ordinary vernacular. Just chat, chatting language. Yeah, chatting language. It's what people are speaking in North India to communicate, to buy things at shops and so on. It's not the sacred ritual language, the language of the gods, which is Sanskrit. And his doctrine is at once a philosophy to live by, and a method,

a practical spiritual path of mental training and discipline, that he assures his followers will free them from the pain inherent in existence. And what's unique about it is it's open to all. You don't have to be a Brahmin or don't have to be a fancy Kashatria or anything else. Anyone can take this path. It requires no priestly intervention, doesn't involve any rituals or sacrifices, and it only requires trust in the truth laid down by the Buddha and his monastic community. And following this path, he says,

anyone can break free from the cycles of rebirth and the bonds of samsara, this idea, the reincarnation goes on and on. And in this way, you can become enlightened or, as they say, obtain nirvana, which means simply a flame blown out by the wind. It's very nice. That's beautiful. Yeah, so just to invoke Joe, my friend Joe again. I love your friend Joe. I'm very sad. I missed him. Or you would have loved Joe. So, you know, I used to ask him. You know, what is the essential belief of your Buddhism? And he said, it's essentially, don't be a shit.

That's it. That is kind of it. That's it. Which I could sign on to, yeah, be more Buddhist, be more Joe. And it's, it is, you know, very simply, it's the first religion that is based on the idea of love. Compassion, detachment. And kindness, yeah. Kindness, non-violence.

And also this intense meditation and personal self-discovery. And what's also new is the idea that it's based on personal merit, not birth. It doesn't matter if you're a Brahmin or what your class or cast is. And so he substitutes ethics for ritual and makes intention what you're intending to do, something intensely private that only you know the final criteria for judging your value. And that's a huge leap forward. That's the first time in human history someone's come up with that formation. Does he also say that, you know, actually I'm not giving the power of this. Does he realise he's creating a new religion or does he think he's just creating a philosophy and, in association with that, does he say actually there is no priestly class here? Because, you know, the Hinduism has been interpreted by the Saffrons, you know, the Brahmins for so long. Is there that with Buddhism or can anyone be a Buddhist? So the problem is, and in a sense this is what complicates all this, is that unlike Christianity where you're getting the first Christian texts about 30 years

after the death of Jesus Christ, or Islam where you're getting the first text within certainly 100 years written down and some of these early manuscripts now. There's one in the University of Birmingham, which is a very, very early version of the Quran, which is much older than anyone realized. With Buddhism, we don't actually have any text

that we can date more than about, I think, five or six hundred years after his death. Everything has been passed on orally, and there are many different versions. And the whole question of how far the Buddha saw himself as starting a new religion or just offering a reform of the existing one, these are all questions. It's actually quite difficult to answer now. And one of the things that I think is often very surprising is that when you see the first Buddhist art, it's very unfamiliar.

And if you go to the very first Buddhist monasteries, which are initially around the area where he lived, and there's no evidence that Buddhism spread beyond that gangetic plain, the borders of Nepal and India, the area around Saanat and Varanasi, that area, there's no real evidence that it spread for maybe 100 or 200 years from that area. and when we do start seeing early Buddhist monasteries and early Buddhist art, it's in a very unfamiliar form. First of all, you don't see the image of the Buddha at all. For the first 100 or 200 years of Buddhist art, the Buddha is symbolized by a turban or a throne or a flaming pillar. And what you do see, which again is very muddling for those who have this idea of this high philosophical Buddhism, is that it's often represented through the prism of pre-existing nature cults.

So there are this cults of tree spirits called yaksha's and yakshi's hanging often very voluptuously from branches. There's the serpents and cobras who live in the waters, the Nagas. And they are often depicted spreading their hood over the Buddha as he's meditating. You also get that in Jainism, the idea of a snake protecting the Tietan. Ankara's when they're meditating. And so it's very difficult to tell exactly what the early Buddhists believed and what they didn't. We have very clear central message of compassion, love, the middle way, the middle path, not too much asceticism, not too much sensuality. But exactly what the Buddha was planning, was it his own religion or something quite different, is hard to say.

And it's very exciting when I certainly love going to these very early Buddhist monasteries. go to the Western Ghats around Puna. Yeah. Do you remember I sent you those pictures from Bombay of that cave, which had been reapers? You went to seize a whole lot of very early Buddhist caves this Christmas, didn't you? Just this Christmas. And I mean, just to give you an idea of that sort of, you know, the iconography in there. So this was a cave near a river.

And as William explained, I think, in a previous episode, but often these things, I think it was one of our extras, actually, so people may not have heard it unless you're part of the club. So come and join the club because you hear all of these lovely extras. But, you know, often near rivers or near coastlines to export these ideas. The monks would build these monasteries or temples in caves. And this one had just beautiful carvings. They look like dancing women, like the most beautiful, rounded hips, rounded bosoms, hands above their heads. And you can still see the whisper of them in the rock face.

And then what happened? I mean, they're scenes from the Ramayn as well. I mean, absolutely. and there's a shiv, it looked like there was a shiv that was carved somewhere in the rock. So often these caves were shared or the Buddhists would leave and the Hindus would come in afterwards. Sometimes there are gods which are shared. There are sometimes there's successive owners with new religions. But what you definitely get is this idea that there's a whole world of animism in India.

Even today when you walk through villages, you see, you know, you see trees with threads around them and people worshipping. the roots of a banyan tree and so on. And that goes back to the very earliest times. The very earliest art that we have from India shows these little tree shrines with people worshipping at them and looking for tree spirits. And that gets absorbed into early Buddhism. So what starts off probably is a very pure philosophical path soon absorbs spiritual beings like the Nagas and the Axas. And the idea is that these are potentially dangerous spirits. which the Buddha tames with his message. So the first Buddhist that we have doesn't have that familiar image of the meditating

Buddha with his legs crossed and his eyes slightly roll back in his head and this look of eternal peace on his face. Instead, what you get is images of voluptuous women and snakes, which is not at all what you're expecting. It was confusing. I was confused initially quite confused. But, you know, William, those are my tiny little bory veys. Caves just in the suburbs of Bombay.

Hardly anyone knows about those. The ones that people travel from all over the world to see are the Allora and Ajanta Caves. Tell us about those. Oh, God, I love them. So particularly, for me, it's the Ajanta Caves, which are the, oh, it's the greatest gallery of pictures from the ancient world to survive. Where are they? Inland from Bombay, inland from Orangabad, in a little valley.

They were discovered in the 19th century by a British hunting party that was tracking a tiger down a ravine. And in a very sort of Indiana Jones way, the hunters following the pug marks of this tiger. And they hopped over the rocky bed of the Wagora River. And they see that the pug prints leave straight past an opening in the rock face. And it's clearly not a natural cavity. And despite the long grass and all the creepers. and pepper vines and the undergrowth and so on, they can see that it's a man-made façade cut straight into the rock.

This is in 1819. And they build little torches of dried grass, light it and step inside. And they find these enormous halls cut into the rock, hundreds of feet deep, cutting straight into the rock face. And we're not talking Lord of the Rings. We're talking fine carving. We're not talking like sort of, you know, great slaps. We're talking beautifully carved and ornate.

And they see on the walls, on that very first visit, orange robe monks with white halos standing on blue lotuses and figures that they describe as figures with curled wigs. And they're crunching over human skeletons and other debris drabting by sort of generations of predators and scavengers. And the leading guy, John Smith, takes out his hunting mouth and in true British form. This just cuts his name onto a Buddha, John Smith, 28th Cavalry, 28th April 1819.

And I have to say he is accompanied by Sam to Rimple. No, no. Yes, yes. Another one. Another one, I'm afraid. Oh, for heaven's sake. I didn't know that until a couple years ago. I got a letter.

But can I just say, just defacing the thing with your penknife, how very teen spirit that is. Seriously, Kilroy was here. You still see it there today, and it does look, it does look very Kilroy. Because not only is this just vandalism per se, it's in the moment. middle of what is literally the most beautiful ancient paintings of Buddhist art. They're dated most of them, the some which are first, second century BC, but most of the great ones are from the 5th century AD. Wow. And it's this lost golden age of painting, along with the frescoes of Pompeii and Herculaneum and maybe Livia's house in Rome or near as golden house in Rome also. These are the most

comprehensive depictions of courtly life to survive anywhere from classical antiquity. And the style of painting is not two-dimensional. The shading gives you the impression of a three-dimensional figure, so just to give you an idea of what painting was like then, but also because it's deep down and in these caves, the pigmentation is still pretty true, isn't it? I mean, you see colour. You get these amazing colours, lizard green, topaz yellow, lotus blues, preserved. I mean, it is fading. And even now, they're desperately trying to find ways to conserve it. But amid all these other figures are these two famous, astonishing bodhisattvas, Avlicatisvara and Badrapani. And they are these extraordinary beings

of this kind of symbols of otherworldly beauty, elegance and compassion. And they're shown with their eyes half closed, inward looking. I don't know how you put it, sort of weightlessly swaying on the threshold of enlightenment. Yeah. And there's a wonderful 1920s artist-doran called Stella Cramerish who talks about these bodice at first court in what she calls a gale of stillness. Oh, is that beautiful. And that gorgeous? That's how beautiful. But that is true.

You know, if you see these carvings, considering that they are hewn from the heaviest rock, they seem weightless. They seem very light. I mean, it is artistry. Of the highest, highest order. It's a total order, yeah. And it makes you so frustrated that everything else has gone, that there's just one survival of ancient India bathing. There's a couple of other fragments, a little in Tamil Nadu, one in Madhya Pradesh,

but basically it's just this one cycle. And what is wonderful is that these are the oldest images in the Buddhist pantheon, particularly the ones in Cave 10, which date from 150 BC. And you look at these faces, and there's this sort of profound melancholy on their expressions. And they're telling quite sad stories, these Jettica stories of the previous lives of the Buddhas. There's one which tells about the loving wife of a king who is justly accused of trying to kill him. And another tells story of a boy who is going to fetch water from his parents when the king of Varanasi shoots him on a hunting expedition or another about a noble elephant murdered by hunters for tasks. So these are all kind of sad stories.

And you see these faces. And, you know, 2,000 years after they were painted, these faces, these faces, is still convey with amazing immediacy the character of the different setters, you know, the alert guard, the king court and the assignment of the hunt, or the obedient son, fetching water. And in fact, they're so contemporary and they're so immediately recognisable that you have to keep reminding yourself that these are sitters not from our world, that they are depicting a court and a jungle world of hunters and hunted

and Buddhist monks and devotees that vanished from these hills two millennia ago. Speaking of it for deeply emotionally disturbing stories, why was there a Dalrymple there? Go on. Why? Just on a hunting expedition. When I was researching this, I wrote to this guy called Dieter Schlengloff, that is the great German art historian boss of the Ajanta world. And he did write as a PS. Are you any relation to Major Sam Derunple who was there? They were discovered.

So I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's fine. The other thing, I think we should say, is that. Again, we have a very clear idea in our head about Buddhism as this very ascetic religion, rightly, because it does. You know, only meant to have a single sewing needle, a begging bowl, two robes and some sandals. That's your entire lot.

And yet, because the Buddha comes from this courtly world, because he's a prince, a lot of the murals show this world of princely splendor. So as well as all the pictures of monks on the pillars and so on, you get these handsome princes and bare-chested nobles, princesses with tiaras of Jasmine. And jewels, you know, completely bedecked, yeah, with jewels and flowers. Nothing except jewels. I mean, they're almost naked, these kind of amazing swan-necked women and narrow-waisted dancing girls of incredible beauty. And you can see them swaying to unheard music, ringing. their anklets and, you know, they're wearing nothing but spinels and cat's eyes.

Can I just say it's a novel way to, you know, give up. It's like to tend people into a more simple way of life. It's sort of, there was a TV show here in the 1980s called Bullseye where they always showed you the thing you didn't win. Look at what you could have won. And it's a little bit like, look at what you've given up as a strategy. It's a bit odd. There are debates about this. and there are several potential answers to why all this is shown. And one is that you're trying to actually attract rich patrons to your monastery. So if you have really gorgeous paintings, then the local prince may come and give you something nice. But secondly, also, I think, no, it is deliberate that they're showing scenes of fertility.

And it's a sign in Indian culture of the period. It's a sign of auspiciousness. It's not meant to be something sort of deeply sexy that's going to distract you from your aesthetic, celibate way. It's meant to be something which shows the goodness of the world. The other thing, I should say, is that what again is extraordinary and very interesting is we again think of Buddhism as being almost a sort of Marxist religion and that you give up your gold and you embrace an ascetic ideal. And you live with a collective, yeah, a whole bunch of other Buddhists, yeah. But it's very clear from the beginning that the Buddhists were supported by the merchant classes and that the patrons who are paying for

these pictures and who are paying for the workmen and labourers to come and excavate these enormous halls into the mountain sides, that they are the merchant classes. And from the very beginning, Buddhism becomes a religion that promotes international trade. And what you find is that these Buddhist monasteries begin to occupy the trade routes, that they're often at the vital passes where a merchant caravan might stop for the night. They have guest rooms, for the merchants. And fairly early on, again, contrary to all our ideas, they begin lending money. So you get monks setting up copper mines, banks, cotton weaving by nuns, all sorts of stuff that you don't necessarily associate. And there in the frescoes in the Janter are these

international cast of merchants who are coming to visit. So you see Persians, Parthians, Scythians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, even Greeks and Romans in some of the pictures. And even the pigments indicate these sort of international connections. The gorgeous blue is lapis lazuli from Badakshan, from Afghanistan. And so the first caves of the Jantera, probably about 150 BC, the big ones are 600 AD. You're dealing with a world which is very international, very cosmopolitan, and which is propelled by merchants. Do we know, you say, you know, the beginning of his life is shrouded in mystery? Do we know much about, you know, towards the end of his life, what happens to him?

So, yes, I mean, he clearly becomes a big figure in a small area of India. There's a whole area around Bodhaya, around Sarnat, around the Ganges plains, which becomes partly Buddhist and which Buddhist monks become part of the landscape alongside Jane monks, Hindus following various versions of the Vedas or the Upanishads, and other sects which have completely disappeared, like the Adjivocas, who were referred to in many early texts, but no longer exist at all. We didn't even know what really they believed. And as I say, for the first 200 years from about the 5th to the 3rd century BCE, Buddhism is almost completely invisible in the archaeological record. There are no inscriptions for 200 years.

Not one Buddhist text survives from the period. and only a handful of early Buddhist sites, so even the slightest sign of occupation, and those ones tend to be located in this same small area, northeast India Nepal, bordering the Ganges where the Buddha had lived and preached. But as we will discover in our next episode, this soon changes,

because there is one particular devotee of the Buddha who comes to power, and that man is responsible, 200 years later for taking Buddhism, not just right across India and to Sri Lanka, but sending out missionaries all over the Middle East as far as Libya. Gosh, dun dun, da, that seems to be a required sound effect for that. Join us for the next in our mini-series. We're going to discuss, as William says, how Buddhism goes from India to the far reaches of the world.

I'm in Libya, good of his sake. But if you can't wait to hear the episode and you just want to hear it all now, you can if you are a member of the Empire Club. A friend of the show you will become and as a friend of the show, you can hear the whole Buddhism miniseries right here, right now. You just need to sign up on Apple Podcast or go to EmpirePodukuk.com and sign up over there. And Anita, before we go, I have a very, very important announcement. you can pre-order your copies of the Golden Road right now. And the links are in the show notes. But I want to give a special mention to the genuinely, incredibly beautiful Waterston special edition

with astonishing artwork, including on the spine and all over the kind of end papers. It just looks so beautiful. And that will be available on their website to order from Thursday 7th of March. Till then, though, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William Dremple.