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Sundberg - The Wilderness Monks of The Abhayagiri
Sundberg - The Wilderness Monks of The Abhayagiri
Sundberg
The wilderness monks of the Abhayagirivihara and the origins of Sino-Javanese esoteric
Buddhism
In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 160 (2004), no: 1, Leiden, 95-123
1
As a preface to this essay, I wish to offer a word of thanks to Professor Raghu Vira and his
family, whose ambitious Sata-Pitaka Series is the source of a scholarly Indological feast and has
helped to recover memories of a lost world. I am grateful to John Banks, the Reverend Mahinda
Deegalle, Nobumi Iyanaga, Roy Jordaan, Lokesh Chandra, Mark Long, Iain Sinclair, David
Snellgrove, and the two necessarily anonymous Bijdragen referees for advice and assistance
with this article.
2
This script is sometimes referred to as prae-nagari, especially in the earlier Dutch archaeo-
logical literature. The proper term for this script is siddamatrka, as Bosch (1928:4) clarifies in his
paleographic discussion of the script.
3
The readings published to date are to be found in Bosch 1928:63-4 (given that Bosch accom-
plished minor miracles with his painstaking work on the inscrutable Kelurak inscription, his
work is a surprisingly sporadic transliteration of the comparatively highly legible four frag-
ments then in the National Museum under the catalogue number D50, accompanied by a usable
photograph of them), De Casparis 1950:11-22 (a rather complete, annotated reading of the five
parts now in the National Museum under the number D50), De Casparis 1961 (providing a few
JEFFREY ROGER SUNDBERG, who graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
and from the University of Southern California, is an electrical engineer. He is a specialist in
VLSI design and high-speed signal integrity. His address is: 2601 W. Broadway Blvd, Tucson,
AZ 85745-1787, USA.
fragmentary readings of the key finds from the then newly-found 1954 pieces) and De Casparis
1981:73-4 (a complete but slightly faulty transliteration and translation of the first three stanzas,
the only complete stanzas allowed by the presently known fragments). The attentive student
will note that some of De Casparis's published transliterations vary from recension to recension.
Sarkar (1971:48i-48vii) has republished De Casparis's 1950-1961 transliterations, but has mislo-
cated many of the newer De Casparis readings (his transcription is thus wrong in many details)
and his translation should be treated with substantial wariness, especially the last ten lines of the
inscription. Lokesh Chandra (1995:10-8) has provided a more cogent translation of the first three
stanzas as given by De Casparis's 1981 transcriptions and added a substantial explication of the
imagery. I intend to publish a more complete transcription and study on a later occasion.
The wilderness monks of the Abhayagirivihara 97
0 50 m
On top of the terrace in two situations, are seen some loose blocks of stone which
appear to have constituted the elevated foundation of the sheds, which the
Javanese I believe in imitation of the Hindus term Pendapa or Mandapa. Dr. Tytler
who accompanied me in one of my last excursions to Prambanan, discovered in
the largest of the two piles of stone on the terrace a fragment of a slab of stone on
which was a Deva Nagari inscription, and a little way to the south of the build-
ing a mutilated stone figure which I imagine to represent Mahadewa destroying
Tripurasura. (Bernet-Kempers 1949:185-6.)
Although many more fragments, presently totalling ten, are now known to us
than that seen by Crawfurd in the centre of the rubble-pile of the 'pendopo',
his report is significant to us because, as we will shortly see, the earliest sight-
ing of this Abhayagirivihara inscription places it directly in the centre of a
building which has telltale architectural characteristics that associate it with
some of the meditation monasteries outside the parent Abhayagirivihara
monastery located in Anuradhapura in north-central Sri Lanka.
However, before we attribute the Abhayagirivihara inscription to this
particular building on the basis of Crawfurd's description, we should keep
in mind that others of the fragments were found outside the formal walls of
the pendopo, in two instances rather far away from it if the archaeological
reports are to be trusted. While two fragments, those denoted by Bosch as
fragments 'a' and 'b', 5 were found in 1886 by IJzerman near the ring wall of
the so-called 'palace',6 two more fragments were found sometime before 1915
by Rothe, who discovered them 'close to the restoration of the gate-build-
ing' (De Casparis, 1950:11). There was a fifth, spearhead-shaped fragment,
designated 'e', which was known to De Casparis in 1950 but not to Bosch in
1928, and this latter piece is likely to have been one of the wartime's poorly
catalogued finds. However, the origins of the 1954 fragments, the first to
receive proper professional archaeological documentation, show clearly that
the newer, Yogyakarta fragments were unearthed not very many metres at
all from the southeast corner of the pendopo. Thus on balance we can feel
5
The inscription is at present divided into two parts. The five parts that had surfaced before
Indonesian independence are now in the storeroom of the National Museum. Bosch's photo-
graph depicts four of these which he labels 'a' to 'd', while the fifth fragment, 'e', was read by
De Casparis and documented in his 1950 book. The 1954 excavation season turned up five more
fragments, which are now in the building of the Suaka Peninggalan Sejarah dan Purbakala of the
Special District of Yogyakarta, Bogem. I thus refer to 'Museum' and 'Yogyakarta' portions of the
inscription. Portions of these new fragments are presented by De Casparis in his 1961 and 1981:
73-4 publications. Although approximately the lower middle sixth of the inscription presumably
still remains to be found on the Ratu Baka plateau, it would be desirable if the Museum and
Yogyakarta fragments could be reunited under the conservancy of the National Museum and a
prominent place arranged for public display.
6
IJzerman's 1886 findings were likely uncovered in the same position, just outside the east-
ern side of the ring wall, as the 1954 findings.
The wilderness monks of the Abhayagirivihara 99
confident in saying that this inscription was associated with the pendopo as
illustrated in the map.
This pendopo is somewhat remarkable in shape and layout. Two plat-
forms, one square and one rectangular, are raised about 1.4 metres high and
joined together by a narrow walkway about 2.5 metres long and 2 metres
wide. The walkway has stairwells on the east and the west sides that lead to
the stone-paved courtyard. Three more stairways provide access to the plat-
form. The entire pendopo is surrounded at a distance by a tall wall which is
pierced in the middle of three sides, north, west, and south, with doorways
that once contained double-hinged wooden doors. The eastern wall was left
intact and was not pierced with a door. The architecture is wholly devoid
of decoration with the exception of a series of small cornices which were
perched at regular intervals along the top of the surrounding wall.
This pendopo itself bears clues to its function as the centrepiece of the
Abhayagiri monastery erected to house the Sinhalese monks and serves to
confirm the fact that the inscription both derives from the pendopo and
concerns the pendopo, for this pendopo uncannily resembles the distinc-
tive layout of the 'meditation monasteries' on the western outskirts of the
Abhayagirivihara in Anuradhapura.7 These monasteries have been exten-
sively documented and analysed by Wijesuriya (1998) and the present
discussion of these.ruins derives largely from his work. Let me attempt to
correlate the physical features of the Sri Lankan monasteries with those of the
Javanese pendopo. First, this style of monastery is distinctively characterized
by the double platform. Wijesuriya (1998:4) notes that 'the main feature is a
building which has two raised stone platforms, linked to each other and sur-
rounded by a boundary wall. There is ample evidence to show that one of the
platforms once carried a superstructure, while the other had been an open,
raised terrace. There are also other constructions such as baths, urinals, and
meditative walkways, including footpaths and man-made ponds. No build-
ings suitable for lay worship have yet been discerned. The monastery was
almost invariably placed on a rocky outcrop and often placed in proximity
to caves (Wijesuriya 1998:31). Concerning the 'double platform', Wijesuriya
(1998:20) notes that there are two side-steps on the bridge which connects
them, and that the entire affair, other than occasional mouldings and in one
instance a urinal which was elaborately carved to represent a palace, was
devoid of ornamentation. Finally, a note on their orientation: Wijesuriya
(1998:60) observes that all the buildings were situated along the cardinal
directions, with sixteen of the seventeen instances of the 'double platform'
7
The credit for first observing the correlation between Javanese and Lankan pendopos is
due to the prominent archaeologist Deraniyagala, now director of the Archaeological Survey of
Sri Lanka (see Miksic 1993).
100 Jeffrey Roger Sundberg
around the Abhayagirivihara being built along the east-west axis, while one
was built along the north-south axis. If we now compare the general features
of the Javanese pendopo with those of the Sinhalese 'double platform' mon-
asteries, we find they rather closely accord: plain, cardinally oriented double
platforms, one square and one rectangular, accessed by stairs on either side of
a connecting walkway, the whole surrounded by a wall, provided with foot-
paths and man-made ponds, and positioned on a rocky prominence in prox-
imity to small caves. The discrepancies include the fact that in the Javanese
instance there are a regular series of sockets for roof-bearing pillars in both
platforms whereas this feature only obtains on one side of the Lankan plat-
forms, and both the Javanese platforms have access stairs whereas only the
rectangular Lankan platform possesses such a feature. The Javanese build-
ing has some slight decorative elaboration on the exterior drainage spout of
the outer wall. Furthermore, the Javanese instance lies along a north-south
axis whereas the Lankan ones, with one exception, are generally built along
an east-west axis. Finally, the Lankan monasteries open to the north, east,
and south, while the Javanese pendopo is closed to the east but opens to
the north, west, and south; this westward orientation seems particular to the
Ratu Baka as a whole and may have something to do with a purpose as a
funerary ground.8
Now we turn to the purpose of these remote 'double platform' monas-
teries. Wijesuriya's analysis shows that they are tapovana, or 'ascetic forest'
monasteries which provided monsoon-season shelter from the elements and
from wild beasts. According to Sinhalese chronicles, these were inhabited
by monks known as arannaka for their forest-dwelling habits or pamsukulika
because of their vow to wear only rag-robes, the more extreme of these ascet-
ics taking their rags from cremation grounds. Their ascetic activities were
most prominently supported by King Sena I, who built the Mount Arittha
(modern Ritigala) monastery for them, endowing it with royal privileges and
great numbers of servants, gardeners, and craftsmen.
In the case of the Javanese Abhayagirivihara, we have seen strong evi-
dence that at least one building, that of the pendopo near which the inscrip-
tion was found, has a strong architectural connection to a similar structure on
the fringes of the Abhayagirivihara in Lanka. May we then import into Java
Wijesuriya's attendant concepts of the purpose of these monasteries as sum-
mer shelters for ascetic forest-dwelling monks? To me, it seems unlikely that
the Sailendra king would benefit from procuring monks of this variety: why
cast across the Indian Ocean to find an ascetic rag-garbed monk when you
could more or less compel the existence of such a type from local Javanese
stock, and what direct ritual or pedagogical benefit could such foreign monks
8
For a preliminary discussion of this possibility, see Sundberg 2003.
The wilderness monks of the Abhayagirivihara 101
render to the Sailendra king? This is, after all, a stratum of Buddhist monas-
tic experience that is unlikely to travel well: it does not require a preceptor
from the opposite side of the Indian Ocean to teach an ascetic monk to lead
a rough life. If the world is likely to esteem the ascetic highly, the ascetic is
unlikely to pay attention to the world at all; so, seen from the opposite point
of view, what blandishments could you offer to a Lankan monk to come
and conduct his austere life in proximity to the court of a different king?
A wilder jungle than the one in which he already lives? Even more ragged
rags to wear? Furthermore, nothing about the terrain suggests that it should
be considered as even slightly uncultivated: the Ratu Baka plateau was an
immense civil engineering project involving clearing, quarrying, excavat-
ing, and filling up the natural hill and refashioning it as a flat, manicured,
terraced, and walkwayed plateau.9 As such, it is almost impossible to con-
ceive of the area as 'wild'. If it was difficult to access from the south and
east because of the steepness of the bluff, from the northwest easy and flat
access could be gained to the 'wilderness' monastery via the paved paths,
stairs, and walkways across the terrace. In short, both the tapas and the vana
were likely missing from the Javanese tapovana-type monastery. Finally, the
existence of these 'rag-wearing monks' seems to be formally associated with
a Sinhalese king, Sena I (reigned circa 833-85310), of seemingly slightly later
date than the 792 Abhayagirivihara inscription, although it is difficult to con-
ceive a different role for this type of distinctive architecture, limited as it is to
the wilderness periphery of the Anuradhapura Abhayagirivihara. In antici-
pation of developments to follow later in this article, allow me to point out
that both tantrists and ascetics received direct royal patronage from the Sena
I. Gunawardana (1979:249) points out evidence that the Sinhalese chronicles
record that Sena I fell under the malign teachings of an Indian teacher of the
false Vajiriyavada doctrines.
In casting about for a more suitable explanation of exactly what kind of
monastery was established on the Ratu Baka and what kind of monks were
administering it, we should note several archaeological aspects of the ground
around the pendopo and the Ratu Baka plateau which may have some bear-
ing on determining the function and the extent of the Abhayagirivihara
9
My rough calculation suggests that something like a minimum of 25,000 cubic metres, pos-
sibly much more, of limestone material was cut out and moved to fashion the Ratu Baka plateau
into the topographic form it assumes today.
10
Wijesuriya (1998) provides two different dates for this king, citing on p. 23 regnal dates of
833-853, and on p. 36 a date of 846-866. Gunawardana (1979:8) seems to favour the date of 833-
853 for Sena I. The regnal years of the Sinhalese kings have not been reconstructed with absolute
certainty, being based upon concatenations of regnal lengths of a succession of kings rather than
fixed with respect to dates on a well-described calendar. The poor concordance with the royal
names recorded in the Chinese chronicles suggests that there is much room for revision.
102 Jeffrey Roger Sundberg
11
My preliminary reading of the inscription suggests that there is no information about the
precise numbers of monks at the vihara. Of course, one-sixth of the inscription remains to be
found.
12
One consequence of our fairly firm identification of at least one building of the
Abhayagirivihara requires a reposting of at least one sign in the Ratu Baka park. The series of
pools on the lower terrace to the east of the Abhayagirivihara pendopo are presently termed
the kaputren or '[bathing] place of the princesses' in the guideposts of the archaeological park,
The wilderness monks of the Abhayagirivihara 103
This section will focus on the meaning and significance of Lanka, and spe-
cifically the esoteric forest-dwelling monks of the Abhayagirivihara, to two
patriarchs in the Chinese esoteric Buddhist tradition. These two patriarchs,
Vajrabodhi and his disciple Amoghavajra,13 were Indians in the service of
the T'ang emperor and together stimulated the cultivation of the practices
and rites of the Yoga Tantras in the imperial Chinese court, starting a lineage
or tradition of teachings which by 805 had spread to Japan and Java. As we
shall see, Lanka figures so integrally into these monks' ideological history
that at least one biography of Amoghavajra says that he did indeed come
from Lanka.
Before commencing their biographies, let us briefly assess exactly how
influential these two patriarchs were. Building upon the groundwork
of Subhakarasimha and his adherence to the doctrines of the Carya-
tantric Mahavairocana-sutra, the master-disciple team of Vajrabodhi and
Amoghavajra ministered to three T'ang emperors and founded the rituals
of their preferred text, the Yoga-tantric Sarva Tathagata Tattva Sangraha (here-
after abbreviated as STTS). Beyond their ministrations to Chinese emperors,
royalty, generals, and politicians, they translated copious numbers of tantric
texts and established in China the Vajrayana School, which persists to this
day as the Japanese Shingon sect. The cumulative effects on the culture and
polity of the mid-T'ang years are incalculable, and memories of their benevo-
lent activity lasted for centuries.
The two patriarchs are' the subjects of multiple biographies, including
some done by disciples. The standard biographies were composed almost
150 years after Amoghavajra's death in 774, written on Sung imperial order
by Tsan-ning in his Sung-kao-seng chuan, which collated and compared all of
the documents, inscriptions, biographies, and stelae available. Tsan-ning's
biography drew heavily upon the work of two of Amoghavajra's disciples,
Chao Ch'ien's Hsing-chuang and Fei-hsi's Pei-ming, but ignored several
other available sources including some biographies by direct disciples of
Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra. These various biographies differ among them-
selves in details and are not mutually consistent in their presentation of facts,
including such fundamental facts as where these two tantric masters were
a designation that accords with both local popular legend and some archaeologists' belief that
the Ratu Baka constituted a giant palace for the Javanese kings. This attribution of the kaputren
is almost certainly false; no bathing princesses were likely allowed anywhere near the ascetic
Buddhist monks of the vihara, tantrists or not.
13
Amoghavajra is rather frequently referred to by his Chinese name Bukong jingang.
104 Jejfrey Roger Sundberg
born and where they met. As some biographies have Amoghavajra being
born in Lanka and others have him meeting Vajrabodhi in Java, an examina-
tion and evaluation of the details of these biographies will greatly concern
my present thesis.
Set out below is an extract from Tsan-ning's biography of Amoghavajra
(Taaisho shinshu daizokyo (hereafter abbreviated as T) 50 #2061 712b26-cl3)
as translated by Chou (1945:290-2). The scene is set after the death in 741 of
Vajrabodhi, who had urged Amoghavajra to go to India and Lanka to collect
the needed tantric texts, especially the all-important STTS which up until
then had been lacking in Chinese libraries:
finally arrived in China - but without his copy of the full STTS, which legend
says he lost in a terrible storm at sea, retaining only the abridged version of
the STTS.14 Vajrabodhi established his reputation in China as a tantric master
despite his lack of access to the major texts of his discipline, and late in his
life instructed his favoured disciple Amoghavajra to journey back to India
and Lanka to find them.
Amoghavajra knew where he had to go to obtain the tantric texts he
needed to fill his library and fulfil his education: Lanka and South India.
Although Amoghavajra seems himself to have been of Kashmiri or central
Indian origin and tutored in China by Vajrabodhi, the South Indian Brahmin
preceptor who himself had studied for many years at the northern monastic
university of Nalanda in modern Bihar, we find that Amoghavajra forwent
the opportunity to set out toward the famous Nalanda, instead making a
direct line to Lanka. He likely did so, I will claim, either because the STTS
originated in Lanka or because Vajrabodhi told him that a little effort in
Lanka would turn up a copy of it. Amoghavajra's teachings, at least up until
746, were conducted entirely without full access to the STTS, the major text of
his lineage faith. He must up until then have had to improvise all of his teach-
ings and doctrines as he went, and the acquisition of complete and authentic
texts in Lanka, sealed with a consecration by Samantabhadra, may have been
the reason for their sudden, seemingly eager, acceptance by the Emperor Su-
tsung, itself a rather substantial indicator that the roots of the STTS tradition
lay in Lanka. However, there is some hint from Amoghavajra that the text of
the STTS would not be forthcoming from the Indians. In his prolegomenon
to his Instructions on the gate to the teaching of the secret heart of great yoga of the
scripture of the diamond tip, (T 39 #1798 808al9-24), written before his success-
ful Lankan journey, Amoghavajra wrote the following about the STTS, which
14
In his tale of the Iron Stupa, Amoghavajra quotes Vajrabodhi's telling of the tale (see Orzech
1995:317 from which this translation of T 39 #1798 808bl6-28 is directly excerpted): 'I set forth
from the western country [India] to cross the southern ocean in a fleet of more than thirty great
ships [...] we ran into a typhoon [...] At that time I always kept the two scriptures [that is, the full
and abridged versions of the STTS] I was bringing nearby so that I could receive and keep them
and do the offerings. Now, when the captain saw that the ship was about to sink, everything on
board was cast into the ocean, and in a moment of fright the one-hundred-thousand-verse text
was flung into the ocean, and only the superficial text was saved. At that time I aroused my mind
in meditation, doing the technique for eliminating disasters, and the typhoon abated, and for
perhaps more than a quarter mile around, the ship wind and water did not move. All on board
took refuge in me, and bit by bit we got to this shore and arrived in this country. In the seventh
year of the reign period Opened Prime (CE 721) [I] arrived in the Western Capital (Changan)
and the Chan master Yising sought consecration from me. When it became known that [I had]
this extraordinary Gate of the Teaching, [he] commanded ISvara to help translate it into Chinese.
Yising and the others, as it turns out, personally transcribed it. First [we] relied upon the order of
the Sanskrit text and then [we] discussed its meaning so as not to lose words. [Yet] its meaning
has not yet been [fully] explained.'
The wilderness monks of the Abhayagirivihara 107
texts. Furthermore, the Abhayagirivihara housed 5,000 monks when Fa-hien visited it the cen-
tury before, and Vajrabodhi would be but one transitory, migrant soul, lacking a prominent line-
age, in a field of thousands of monks, leading us to wonder how far he could have penetrated
into the system, especially given the importance to the tantric tradition of very strong master-
student relationships. He then floated, seemingly in Southeast Asia, for three years before finally
striking out for China. Amoghavajra, by contrast, was exceedingly well prepared to succeed in
obtaining the most prized editions of the tantric texts. He had as a political patron the emperor
of China, went straight to Lanka and the Abhayagirivihara accompanied by 21 monks and Tang
diplomatic credentials, and spent five years in Lanka copying texts - in fact, the Sinhalese king
also assisted in the production of at least one worthy sutra for diplomatic presentation to the
emperor by his ambassador. There is little reason to be astounded that Amoghavajra succeeded
in obtaining the STTS where Vajrabodhi failed.
It should be said that the monk Kukai, the famous Japanese disciple of Huiguo, holds in his
Record of the Dharma transmission that Vajrabodhi did have an explicitly named preceptor in the
person of Nagabodhi, a monk who was over 900 years old but with the face of a thirty-year-old.
Nagabodhi is claimed to have been a disciple of Nagarjuna, also centuries old, allegedly a confi-
dante of the Four Guardian Kings of the Universe, frequent guest at the submarine palace of the
Naga king, and rescuer of the texts of the Yoga Tantra from the Iron Stupa, where he received his
personal consecration from the Mahasattva Vajrasattva (Abe 1999:198, 221-2). The reader may
judge the plausibility of the higher-level characters claimed by Kukai as his Dharma lineage. To
me, it is interesting that these accounts peter out into the unbelievably supernatural at precisely
the point where the historical biographies lose the lineage: the elusive master of Vajrabodhi.
16
Coquet (1986:84) provides more detail on the monks of this Secret Forest School. These
ascetics studied the Small and Large Vehicles as well as the Triyana, the three stages leading to
the Yoga Tantras. They called themselves disciples of Kasyapa, the disciple who received the eso-
teric doctrines from the Buddha. Despite the number of tantric masters this Secret Forest School
The wilderness monks of the Abhayagirivihara 109
produced, they were still considered heretics for their doctrines, and after a number of persecu-
tions were forced to leave Lanka and seek refuge in the Himalayas. Coquet (1986) unfortunately
does not specify his sources, but these details are not included among the standard sources for
Nagabodhi's background listed by Abe (1999:504, note 74) (I wish to sincerely thank Nobumi
Iyanaga for his extensive and thorough consultation of these sources). This said, the level of
detail Coquet presents regarding the forest monasteries could hardly be contrived and may be
taken from a Tibetan history.
17
Srislla is not known as the formal name of any of the Sinhalese kings. Based upon the
chronologies of the kings, it seems that Aggabodhi VI (circa 740-780) was the king who received
Amoghavajra, while the Javanese Abhayagirivihara was likely constructed during the reign of
Mahinda II.
18
During this 670 embassy, the Sinhalese king may have transmitted the Sanskrit text with
tantric overtones which was later translated by Prajfia in 787. For a brief mention of this, see Levi
1935:83, note 1.
110 Jeffrey Roger Sundberg
missions, the four missions sent in the 20 years after Amoghavajra's arrival
in Lanka in 742 are a keen indicator of the fervour with which the Sinhalese
pursued their relationship with China, and this interest probably persisted
until their 762 discovery that the country had lapsed into revolution, anarchy,
and near collapse after the An Lu-shan Rebellion in 758 and the consequent
warlordism, Muslim, and Tibetan invasions. Not only was the 762 mission
the Lankans' last during the T'ang dynasty, it was the last embassy until 989,
well into the Sung dynasty, a hiatus of 230 years.
This interchange of religious knowledge and texts between highly adept
monks became a high-level religio-diplomatic interchange between Buddhist
kings, in this case between those of the Sinhalese king at Anuradhapura and
the T'ang emperor at Chang'an. As we shall see, there is a parallel develop-
ment in which the Javanese kings became patrons involved in the Sinhalese
dispensations, likely involving precisely this same style of interchange of
tantric texts and, in the Javanese case, monks as well.
The link between the Javanese, the Abhayagirivihara and the Sino-Japanese tantric
masters
19
This short mantra, reading om takl humjahsvaha, is the personal mantra of Vajrapani and
seems to derive from the C o m m a n d of S u m m o n i n g of All the Tathagatas which is used to com-
pel beings to a location. It occurs in the story of the bodhisattva Vajrapani's forceful conversion
of Mahesvara to the Buddhist cause. For a more extensive examination of this inscription a n d its
implications, see Sundberg 2003.
20
De Casparis (1950:13-4) reprises these arguments a n d De Casparis (1975:35-6) presents
some of them in English.
The wilderness monks of the Abhayagirivihara 111
21
These t w o inscriptions share the s a m e script and were almost u n d o u b t e d l y written by the
s a m e h a n d although 14 years separated the writing of the two: Kalasan w a s written in 778 and
Abhayagirivihara in 792.
22
Bosch (1928:13-4) actually concluded from his frustrating failure to find a direct Indian
prototype for all the paleographic oddities that the KA script h a d originally derived from North
India b u t h a d developed independently in Buddhist monasteries in the Indonesian archipelago
for a n u m b e r of centuries.
23
As De Casparis (1979:394, note 42) notes, the script of the Jetavanarama inscription is
indeed very close in style to the KA inscriptions. G u n a w a r d a n a (1966:57) notes that this inscrip-
tion did not originate within the Jetavanarama b u t rather the Abhayagirivihara, a n d specifi-
cally the K u t t a m p o k u n a area to the northwest, which m u s t stand very close to the meditation
monasteries. Personal inspection of the photograph of the Jetavanarama inscription shows that
there are some stylistic features in this inscription which are strongly reminiscent of the Javanese
inscriptions, including the extended, curling superscript letters which can flow backwards for
the space of as m a n y as three characters. However, in the Lankan inscription the vowel tokens
extend back over only the previous character. The Jetavanarama 'sa' is formed with a kinked
horizontal element; KA forms this aksara with a straight horizontal element. The loop which
denotes the Jetavanarama ' m a ' is m u c h more pliable, like a spline, than the circle-terminated KA
specimens. G u n a w a r d a n a (1966:58-61) makes a fairly detailed paleographic examination of the
Jetavanarama inscription a n d generally runs it back to a Bihar-area prototype which straddles the
forms used by D h a r m a p a l a and Devapala, b u t h e cannot determine a precise origin or dating.
112 Jeffrey Roger Sundberg
24
Prajna's biographies h a v e b e e n s u m m a r i z e d in Lokesh C h a n d r a 1990:162-3. H e came from
KapiSa a n d at the age of 23 entered the monastic university of N a l a n d a , w h e r e h e studied sutra
a n d iastra including the VajmSekhara. H e stayed in the country of Chen'li for 18 years. H e then
w e n t to South India, w h e r e he studied the Yoga Tantras, m a n d a l a s a n d m u d r a s of the Five
Families, a n d the guhya- or vidyadhara-pitaka. H e then studied Chinese a n d h e a d e d to Kuang-fu
after being s t r a n d e d for a short while in Sri Lanka. H e arrived in 781 a n d w o r k e d there until
810, translating eight Sanskrit w o r k s (including the Avatamsaka sutra a n d the Sat-paramita sutra)
into Chinese. It is interesting to note that in 787 h e translated a 'partially' tantric text (T 3 #159)
w h i c h h a d been sent by the king of Sri Lanka to the e m p e r o r of China m o r e than a century before
(LeVi 1935:83, note 1). I cannot d e t e r m i n e w h e t h e r or n o t Prajnatara is identical to C h i h - k u a n g ' s
teacher Prajnabodhi, also of South India (Van Gulik 1980:22).
25
Van G u l i k (1980:56) g i v e s a h i s t o r y of t h e e x a m p l e s of t h e p a l m leaves w h i c h c o n s t i t u t e h i s
Plate II. H e n o t e s t h a t Prajnatara g a v e t h e m to E n c h i n (814-891) w h o t o o k t h e m b a c k to J a p a n
w i t h h i m . I cannot reconcile the dates of Enchin's existence w i t h the years that Prajnatara w a s
k n o w n to b e active.
26
This triangular notch at the t e r m i n u s of the m a i n stroke is often the only distinction
b e t w e e n the ' n a ' and one form of the 'ra' in the KA script.
27
The KA inscriptions could not be written by Prajnatara as h e w a s d o c u m e n t e d to b e in
China in 792. However, it could be h y p o t h e s i z e d that h e w a s available to teach religion a n d
calligraphy to the Javanese prior to his 785 arrival in China. Prajnabodhi w e n t to China from
India via the S o u t h e r n Seas (Van Gulik 1980:22). Given the small n u m b e r of Indian m a s t e r s w h o
The wilderness monks of the Abhayagirivihara 113
Figure 2. Specimen characters 'ja na bha ha' taken from the inscription of Nalanda
(top), Kalasan (middle), and the preserved writings of Prajnatara (bottom).
The reader will note that the peculiarities of the Javanese KA script are also found
in the Siddham writing of the tantric masters in China and Japan.
served as the nucleus of the Sino-Japanese tantric school, it is possible that paleographic and
other idiosyncrasies became accepted as normative standards, thus explaining the difficulty of
finding them in the Indian homeland.
114 Jeffrey Roger Sundberg
Abe 1999:126, 505 note 48) within Huiguo's own Dharma Heir circle of six
master-level monks, a circle that included the famous Japanese monk Kukai,
himself founder of the Japanese tantric sect known as Shingon Buddhism.
Bianhong arrived at the Ch'ing-lung-sseu monastery from Java in 780 in order
to obtain the Garbha consecration (Coquet 1986:89). Bianhong's presence at
the highest level of Huiguo's disciples suggests not only that the Javanese
were sufficiently aware of the Chinese esoteric preceptors to send one of their
elite monks to join them, but also confirms that the specific set of Vajrabodhi-
Amoghavajra-Huiguo esoteric lineage doctrines28 would be available to,
among others, Javanese temple architects and would not likely greatly deviate
from those teachings which had been transmitted to Kukai.29
Having noted the documented presence in China of at least one accom-
plished Javanese tantric Buddhist monk, is there, conversely, any evidence in
Java of the presence of Chinese or Japanese Buddhists? Hints of this are in the
lintel-piece now in the Sono Budoyo Museum in Yogyakarta (see Figure 3),
which to my eye clearly depicts sages30 of a Siniatic appearance - these fea-
tures seem to be suggested especially in the shape of the eyes and the fluidity
and length of their beards and moustaches - in marked contrast to the Indian
and Javanese figures who appear on the other temples of Java.
28
To phrase this differently in light of Amoghavajra's biographical history and second
tantric consecration in Lanka, w e should a d d the second lineage Samantabhadra-Amoghavajra-
Huiguo.
29
Iain Sinclair, in a personal communication, pointed o u t the interesting fact that the Javanese
m o n k Bianhong received mastership in only the Mahakarunagarbodbhava from Huiguo, which
either means that h e w a s considered unsuitable for the Vajradhatu mastership or else h a d already
received it before joining Huiguo's circle. Kukai received both from Huiguo, as is clear from
H u i g u o ' s final testament as recorded by his lay disciple Wu-yin (Abe 1999:126, 505 note 48).
30
In a n original draft of this article, I identified these figures as m o n k s as I h a d n o other plau-
sible stock category to which these Chinese-looking characters might belong. After profitable
consultation with Iain Sinclair a n d reference to Figure 23 of Davidson (2002:333), I a m presently
inclined to identify these characters as Vidyadhara, Buddhist sorcerers of i m m e n s e fascination
to Indian a n d Chinese Buddhist audiences of the time. However, I cannot at present reject the
notion that these un-tonsured figures represent m o n k s subject only to the M a h a y a n a vinaya, a
topic of considerable importance in Kukai's Japan a n d pertinent to the lintel's figures because
the Mahayana vinaya did not require the shaving of a disciple's head (Abe 1999:50-5). M o n k s
of this specific devotion to the Mahayana vinaya were indisputably benefacted by the Javanese
kings as they are explicitly mentioned in stanza 3 of the Kalasan inscription (Sarkar 1971,1:36)
- their vihara w a s presumably attached to the temple of Tara. Alternately, these figures m a y
be references to the great tantric ascetic m o n k Mahakasyapa, w h o s e long hair a n d u n s h a v e n
beard served as a n indicator of the longevity of his cave samadhi. Subhakarasimha reportedly
tended MahakaSyapa's locks (Chou 1945:258). We recover the practices of this tantric ascetic
cult in Burma in the eleventh century, where the MahakaSyapa-led 'Ari' (likely arannaka or 'for-
est-dwelling') sect of tantric m o n k s wore 'strong beards a n d u n t r i m m e d hair' a n d were active
until a n orthodox reform in 1248 (De Casparis and Mabbett 1992:297-8). In order not to press an
uncertain identification, I shall refer to the figures on the lintel merely as sages.
The wilderness monks of the Abhayagirivihara 115
Figure 3. Figures with Siniatic features on lintel from Sono Budoyo Museum,
Yogyakarta. Photo courtesy of John Banks.
obtaining pure texts31 and took place based upon the merit and renown of the
masters in China or even Japan, masters who were known to accommodate
at least one senior Javanese disciple within their small elite coterie.
31
As Van Gulik (1980:12-45) makes clear in his extensive and surprising analysis, it is doubtful if
the Chinese and Japanese monks could even understand Sanskrit, and their Indian literary compe-
tence was limited to mastering the characters necessary for accurately reciting and writing dharanl.
Whether or not the Javanese Buddhist adepts were competent in Sanskrit is questionable - there
are very good Sanskrit spellings in the 792 Old Malay MaftjuSrigrha inscription, but evidence from
slightly later periods shows that the sense of Sanskrit orthography often grew corrupt.
The wilderness monks of the Abhayagirivihara 117
32
As Lancaster (1981:197) notes, 'The task is a large one, for the surge of interest in Tantra in the
eighth and ninth centuries brought a massive volume of literature to the Chinese Buddhists'.
33
For those readers whose paleographic curiosity has been stimulated by the discussion of
the forms of the Siddham 'ja' in the discussion above, the 'ja' characters of the words jina jik are
written in the conventional Indian script, that used in the inscriptions of Kglurak and Plaosan,
rather than the distinctive script which we find that Kalasan, Abhayagirivihara, and the Sino-
Japanese Siddhamatrka texts shared in common.
118 /ej^rey Roger Sundberg
and thus indicates the worship of this particular form of the deity during
the Central Javanese period. For example, we find that in Amoghavajra's
commentary on the ritual aspects of the Scripture for humane kings, the
Instructions for the rites, chants, and meditations of the Prajnaparamita dharanl
Scripture for humane kings who wish to protect their states (T 19 #994 514a-519b),
the mantra om jina jik svaha is described as a Buddha-department samaya34
mantra, by which 'all of the Buddhas of the Dharmadhatu of the ten directions
will assemble like a cloud and totally fill the void. [They] empower the prac-
titioner [who will thus] be freed from all obstacles, and the vow cultivating
the purification of the triple karma will be swiftly accomplished.' (Orzech
1996:234.) This mantra shows up in other Yoga Tantra class material like
the Advayavajrasamgraha35 (Snellgrove 1964:249-52) and the Mayajalatantra,
where it also serves as a samaya mantra.36
Second, I draw attention to a remark by Lancaster concerning the textual
foundations of the wall panels of Barabudur. Lancaster (1981:198) notes that
'if we need further proof that the Avatamsaka and Gandavyuha-sutras were
considered to be important by the tantric masters, we can find it in noting
how many of them were translated by these masters. [...] Therefore if the
structure of Barabudur is connected with Tantra as is suspected, it is not out
of place to find the Gandavyuha being used as a key text.' Prajna translated the
Gandavyuha and Amoghavajra the Bhadracaripranidhana, which he promoted
incessantly during his last year (Chou 1945:299). Fontein's observation
(1967:5) that 'the only translation in which the Bhadracarl is appended to the
Gandavyuha is Prajna's translation in forty chapters' may therefore have rel-
evance for the understanding of the Barabudur, especially given the associa-
tion of Prajna and the circle of Huiguo at the end of the eighth century. While
not wishing to deny the indisputable arguments adduced by Snellgrove
(1996) and Klokke (1995) against the interpretation of the Barabudur as an
explicit mandala of the STTS, we cannot exclude a tantrically conceived
background for this monument. To my mind, the efforts of Ishii (1991), who
attempts to explain the Barabudur using T'ang and Javanese tantric manu-
als, represents an interesting step in this direction. However, I suggest the
worthiness of consideration of the top levels of the Barabudur as the 'secret
universal palace of the mind' as described by Kukai in his Record of the
Dharma Transmission, a universal palace in which resided the Dharmakaya
34
Assembly, unification, sacrament, or pledge - see the extensive explication of this impor-
tant tantric term in Snellgrove 1987:165-6.
35
In this text, the mantra om ah jina jik hum accords with the White Vairocana, born o n the
eastern petal o n a lunar disk, born of the syllable om of the Tathagata family, symbolized b y
dung, and consisting of mirror-like knowledge.
36
Personal communication with Iain Sinclair, author of a recent University of Western
Sydney thesis on this tantra.
The wilderness monks of the Abhayagirivihara 119
37
I am indebted to Mark Long for sharing this information. Long wishes to emphasize that
his figures are still being refined because they were calculated with the general coordinates for
the Ratu Baka plateau and the city of Anuradhapura, rather than made with the precise coordi-
nates of the parent and daughter Abhayagiri monasteries in those locations. The true deviation
of the Barabudur from the line between the monasteries is therefore likely to be less than ten
arc-seconds. More of Long's groundbreaking studies of the metrics and numerical symbolism of
Barabudur may be found at his accomplished website, www.borobudur.tv as well as in Voute
and Long (forthcoming).
120 Jejfrey Roger Sundberg
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