Gospel of the Buddha

THE BUDDHIST PILGRIMAGE (The Buddhist Tradition Series): Duncan Forbes; Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 41, U.A. Bungalow Road, Jawahar Nagar, Delhi-110007. Rs. 295.

THE DEVOUT and knowledgeable author of this fine travelogue is a linguist. He served the British Army in India and Nepal, particularly with the Gurkhas. His journeys took him to various countries in Asia and Africa and he landed finally in London as a Fellow of the Trinity College of London University. The author's journeys are not merely to places but to stages of the evolution of the transcendent gospel of the Buddha. In Lumpini, the historic birthplace of the Buddha, he tells us of the prophecy of the wisemen advising King Suddhodana that the new-born will achieve transcendental eminence though they could not specify whether it would be a worldly eminence of emperor or a philosophical one as the torchbearer of a new saving message of truth and love for mankind.

In the chapter ``Home Kapilavasthu'', he starts off with a discussion of the year of birth of the prophet-to-be. Western scholars seek to determine the date with reference to the date of accession to his imperial throne of the greatest of emperors of modern history, Asoka. Sri Lankan chronicles date Asoka's accession as 2018 years after the Buddha. Asoka was 80 years old when he passed away. But the date, 624 B.C., has prevailed bringing 544 B.C. as the year of the attainment of Nirvana by the Buddha. The only demurrer we venture to make here is the description of Asoka as a Buddhist Emperor. This does not emerge from any critical study of the Asokan edicts. Also, it detracts somewhat from the glory of the great Asoka that he helped Buddhism to stabilise and progress only as a Buddhist.

In the chapter ``The great renunciation'', he tells us of the great unease of mind Siddharta suffered from, having seen spectacles of human misery resulting from old age, sickness and death. He had been kept away from these by his parents but fate decreed otherwise. Wisdom, the eternal wisdom, alone could explain the causes of human misery, provide remedies therefor and ensure peace of mind and tranquillity in the inmost recesses of one's being. This resolve takes us to ``Uruvila'', the place of fasting-unto-death by the Buddha. We then come to ``Bodh-Gaya'', where the light that had not been till then seen on land and sea, shone in his being and he emerged as the Buddha, the enlightened one. We then go forward to Saranath, where the most famous sermon was preached exhorting his brethren to lead the right life and think aright.

The foundation of the Order of Buddhist Bhikkus is associated with Rajagriha and the author's account of this prompts us to raise some issues. Why do the monks not observe the law of non- violence to living creatures in the matter of their food? Why do the Buddhist monks depart from the essential discipline of their great faith and resort to killing, as they have done in Sri Lanka? China's absorption of Tibet has given us the inestimable privilege of playing host to the living Buddha, the Dalai Lama. The surrender of Tibet to China is a continuing disaster of our foreign policy. China will rue the day she misappropriated Tibet and set out to evolve Marxist Buddhism. She may even, like Henry VIII of England, declare the Communist President of China as the head of a ``reformed'' Buddhism. Who knows?

S.R.

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