The Defeat of Buddhism in India 151the status of agriculture had declined since the time of the Buddha.
Then he adds, ‘there are other classes of many kinds that inter-
marry according to their several callings. It would be difficult to
speak of these in detail’ (I: 82). Either the multitude of jatis as we
known them was beginning to come into existence, or here also he
is referring to the Brahmanical way of classifying ‘mixed jatis’
rather than to his own observations. He comments, in an apparent
reference to untouchability, that ‘butchers, fishers, dancers, execu-
tioners, and scavengers and so on have their abodes without the
city. In coming and going these persons are bound to keep on the
left side of the road until they arrive at their homes’ (II: 74). This
differs from the earlier reference by the 5th century pilgrim Fa Hsien
to ‘Candalas’ living in their separate villages. Aside from this
description, throughout the book there is almost no concrete sense
of an existing caste system; a few times he describes a king as being
of a particular varna, but that is all.
Hsuan Tsang was impressed with the mildness of the political
regime. India is described as a country where there was little
corporal punishment, where criminals were occasionally punished
by cutting off their noses or hands and feet and expelling them
into the wild where there were some tests by ordeals (I: 83–84).
All of this was mild compared to the tortures of societies like
Europe or China at the time. The administration is described as
‘founded on benign principles’ with little conscription or forced
labour. The whole description seems to indicate a minimally-
administered state, relying for most of its wealth on its centrally-
controlled territories:The private demesnes of the crown are divided into four principal
parts; the first is for carrying out the affairs of state and providing sac-
rificial offerings; the second is for providing subsidies for the ministers
and chief officers of state; the third is for rewarding men of distin-
guished ability; and the fourth is for charity to religious bodies...In
this way the taxes on the people are light, and the personal service
required of them is moderate. Each one keeps his own worldly goods
in peace, and all till the ground for their subsistence. Those who cul-
tivate the royal estates pay a sixth part of the produce as tribute. The
merchants who engage in commerce come and go in carrying out their
transactions. The river-passages and the road-barriers are open on
payment of a small toll. When the public works require it, labour is150 Buddhism in India
Hsuan Tsangs Visit to India
Perhaps the most famous world traveller in history is the Chinese
monk Hsuan Tsang, who visited India in the early years of the
7th century, during the reign of Harsha. A Chinese Buddhist from a
mandarin background, his primary concern was to collect the
important scriptures of Buddhism and visit the sacred sites of his
religion. He was little interested in the social conditions existing in
the places he visited, and he was a guest either in monasteries or of
the powerful and great. With Sanskrit as the only Indian language
he knew, he conversed primarily with Brahmans and many of his
comments (for instance, that the language spoken in outlying areas
is a degeneration of the ‘pure’ Sanskrit) reflect both their biases and
his own. Nevertheless, he was a careful observer who made faith-
ful efforts to record what he observed and the geography of his
travels. Given the paucity of historical sources on Indian life, his
observations gain even greater significance (all references unless
otherwise mentioned are to Beal 1983, Parts I and II).^1
Hsuan Tsang begins by giving an overview of India, noting the
caste divisions and mentioning the Brahmans for their purity and
nobility. ‘Tradition has so hallowed the name of this tribe that...
people generally speak of India as the country of the Brahmans’
(I: 69). His description of castes cites the four varnas, apparently as
described to him by the Brahmans. In contrast to earlier depictions
of farmers as Vaishyas, he describes commerce as the occupation of
the Vaishyas and agriculture as that of the Shudras; this shows that
(^1) In understanding his travels, I have relied on maps provided by geographers Philip
Schwartzberg and Joseph Schwartzberg, though I have some differences with them
especially regarding conventional interpretations of the Maharashtra section of his
travels. Uncertainties regarding distances covered and directions are so immense
that there is speculation that Hsuan Tsang lost most of his manuscripts while cross-
ing the Atak river on his return. In this brief summary I have also given the current
form of place names or the Prakrit/Pali form, since these are closer to the actual
spoken names of the places, rather than the Sanskritised form used by the traveller
himself who spoke only Sanskrit with his translators. Another area of uncertainty
arises from these translation problems and the fact that numerous places in India
often are given the same name (e.g. ‘Kosala’ in central India deriving from the northern
kingdom of the first millennium BCE).