Buddhism in India

Colonial Challenges and Buddhist Revival 235

survived for the longest. The earliest scholars working on

Buddhism were Bengalis, including Rajendralal Mitra (1824–1891)

and a younger scholar, Hari Prasad Shastri, whose book Discovery

of Living Buddhism in Bengalappeared in 1897. Finally Sarat

Chandra Das, a scholar-explorer who had traveled in Tibet and

studied Tibetan Buddhism, published over 50 articles and books,

including an edition of the Dhammapada. In 1882 Das founded a

journal for the Buddhist Text Society, and in 1893 he was

entrusted by Anagarika Dharmapala with the editorship of the

Maha Bodhi Journalwhen Dharmapala went to Chicago. While

the earliest work of Bengali intellectuals on Buddhism was on

Sanskrit texts, Pali was instituted at the university of Calcutta

around the turn of the century, and the first M.A. was awarded in

1901 (Zelliot 1979: 390).

In western India, there were a few who began to take an interest

around the 1880s. The renowned scholar R.G. Bhandarkar had

included Buddhism in his Indological interests from 1978 onwards,

while among popular writers on Buddhism was the non-Brahman

reformer, Krishnarao Arjun Keluskar, who published a life of the

Buddha in 1898; a copy of this book was later presented to

Ambedkar, which is how he was introduced to Buddhism. A seri-

alised life of the Buddha also appeared in a popular children’s

magazine.

While none of these early scholars became formal Buddhists,

Dharmanand Kosambi, the most famous of these early Buddhist-

minded intellectuals, did. (He was the second Indian to take the

diksha; the first was a remarkable man who after having been

involved in the 1857 revolt as a youth, fled to Sri Lanka, and was

ordained in 1890 as Mahavira. He worked in Kushinara, and his

Burmese associate lived to become the man who ordained

Ambedkar in 1956, as the oldest living Buddhist in India). Born in

Goa in 1876, Kosambi’s interest was stimulated by popular writ-

ing in a children’s magazine, and at the age of 32 he left home,

going to Poona, Gwalior, Banaras and finally Nepal, to trace out

the Buddha’s birthplace. A long pilgrimage resulted in his ordina-

tion in 1902, though in the end he returned to a household life. He

lived in Ceylon, Madras, Burma and again in Poona, touring Buddhist

sites of northern India and teaching for a time at Calcutta. His

most important work was Bhagwan Buddha, published in 1940,

which influenced Ambedkar’s rational interpretation of the

revival of interest in Buddhism was taking place among Indian and
European intellectuals which was to make this religion much more
accessible to concerned social radicals.
An important role in this was played by non-Indians. While Max
Muller and others had lauded the Vedas, there were also many
Europeans who looked to Buddhism as the true wisdom of the
East, and this interest and their researches helped to make Buddhist
texts available in India itself. Among these were colonel H.S. Olcott
and the Russian H.P. Blavatsky, who founded the Theosophical
Society in New York in 1875 and immediately began to contact
Asian Buddhists, such as David Hewavitarne who had just taken
on Christian missionaries in an important mass public debate in
Ceylon. The involvement of such Europeans and Americans helped
to give legitimacy to Buddhism, which had been under attack in
countries like Ceylon (Sangharakshata 1980). Olcott toured the Ceylon
countryside in 1886 with the young Hewavitarne, as a result of which
Hewavitarne quit his clerical job and, as Anagarika Dharmapala,
became one of the most important leaders of a revivalistic and
nationalistic Buddhism in Sri Lanka.
In terms of scholarship and making Buddhist literature widely
available, the major role was played by the British scholar Thomas
William Rhys David. He founded the Pali Text Society in 1881,
which brought out many of the Pali canon in translation. Under
Rhys David’s leadership, nearly 25,000 pages of translated material
were published. Later in life he married Caroline Augusta Foley
(C.A.F. Rhys Davids), a scholar in her own right.
In 1891 Dharmapala visited India and the traditional places of
Buddhist pilgrimage in India, and decided to take up the work of
restoring Bodh Gaya, the site of the Enlightenment. Bengalis in
India, including Bengali Theosophists and Sarat Chandra Das,
became his co-workers, and in 1891 the Maha Bodhi Society was
founded in Colombo. This was to become the most important
Buddhist association in India up to the time of Ambedkar. In 1893
Dharmapala attended the historic ‘Parliament of World Religions’
held in Chicago (among other famous Asians was, of course,
Vivekananda). This provided an opportunity for an exchange of
ideas, and helped to bring the ideas of Buddhism to a world forum,
as well as promote it in India itself.
It was perhaps fitting that the revival of Buddhism in India itself
began in Bengal, in eastern India where the original Buddhism had

234 Buddhism in India