Harking back: How over 700 years of Buddhism met an end in Lahore

Vesak Day, the birth anniversary of the Buddha, was held two weeks ago and at Taxila’s Mohra Moradu Stupa a lot of pilgrims gathered and celebrated the birth, date of enlightenment and death, amazingly all on the same date, of the great man.

One need not remind that Gautama Buddha came to Lahore and stayed for a full three months, for it was on his path as he travelled towards ‘enlightenment’. We know from Buddhist holy books that he stayed at the southern-most portion of the mud-walled city. Buddhist scholars have pinpointed Mohallah Maullian inside Lohari Gate as the place where he stayed. This occasion is a reasonable one to describe when Lahore was a purely Buddhist city.

The circumstances under which the city converted to Buddhism needs a brief description. In the period that led to Buddha’s enlightenment, the Brahmin aristocrats, just like the religious scholars-priests of today, claimed a monopoly on all knowledge of religious laws and edicts. In a way all laws had a conditional religious bend, and at the drop of a pin one could be burnt alive on blasphemy charges. Seem that 2,500 years later little has changed in the way our daily lives are governed. Even our Constitution is weighed down by such considerations.

In a way the world then was somewhat similar, just as in that age patricians claimed similar monopoly of religious knowledge in Rome. It seems that even a change in religions itself has not altered this grip of the priestly classes. After the initial Aryan invasions where the king held all supreme power, the priests emerged to encourage a division of functions, in the process usurping the ruler’s priestly functions. This was managed by creating castes and priests being the sole guardians of sacrifices, even of humans. All these slow changes led to rulers being afraid to tamper with the power of Brahmin priests.

In such circumstances Buddha, a prince by birth, set off in search of the ‘truth’. It is amazing that the Punjab even then was a moderate place in terms of behaviour patterns. In those days the Hebrew prophets were ‘prophesying’ and in Iran the ruler Darius was purifying Zoroastrianism, the first ‘One Almighty’ god religion. In those days the thinker Prince Gautam was enjoying life and with time it was a case of diminishing returns in each experience of joy. When each experience showed him the evils of age, disease and eventual death, he entered a stage of penance. He now saw clearly that the Brahmin priests, like all priests, are oppressors and economic exploiters.

It was then that he set off to walk the subcontinent, free of worldly worries, to spend long hours thinking, to practice self-denial. To understand the physical aspects he underwent, it would not be a bad idea for our readers to visit the Lahore Museum where several amazing statues of Gautama are on display. The finest among them is known as the ‘Starving Buddha’. In my college days in the company of a very dear friend we would often spend time staring at the beauty of the artistic creation.

In the area around Taxila and even in other sites in Pakistan, the statues of the great man are found. The fact is that unlike Hinduism where people were forced to worship Brahmans, Gautam professed that humans would find peace by not absorbing themselves into reincarnation. Real peace comes through denial of worldly desires. In a way it was not religion or theology. The need was for a dutiful morality without a deity, or a prayer or a priest. For the subcontinent this was a revolutionary idea where on their very own people started to convert.

In those day while the saint had much earlier introduced the idea called Buddhism, in practice a ruler by the name of Chandragupta Maurya was the man who had conquered Lahore and the Punjab and a much larger part of the subcontinent. There is a theory that Chandragupta was not an Indian, but a mixed Greek-Indian soldier who consolidated his power once Greek influence diminished. He defeated Greek-appointed governors and created a massive empire. His main adviser was a Brahmin called Chanakya, whose theoretical work on ‘how to govern’ in a way outdoes Machiavelli’s doctrine.

But one idea stuck in his mind and that was that the power of the Brahmin priest had to be undone if he was to effectively rule. Hence he took up the rules propounded by the Lord Buddha. The Mauryan Dynasty kept expanding this main idea, and by the time his grandson Asoka came to power he decided to expand the idea of living in peace. He sought peace by first becoming a Buddhist priest as well as the monarch. It was in his days that wells, hospitals and gardens were built.

What was most interesting was that the Punjab and areas to its west all turned towards Buddhism. The mere fact that Gautama had come and stayed in Lahore was explored, and Pali books of that period treat Lahore with much reverence. There was also a time when Asoka built a mud road wide enough to carry a horse-carriage from Bengal to Taxila. Along that route Lahore was a major pilgrim stop and people walked through Mohallah Maullian and nearby streets out of sheer reverence.

The critical question is just how long did Buddhism last in Lahore? The Mauryans were followed by the Kushans, who were Scythian nomads. Their most famous ruler was a Buddhist Greek by the name of Trajan, who was a fervent believer of Gautama, but his beliefs varied from those of the Buddha or even Asoka. While Greek thought was ruled by the ‘finite’, the subcontinental mind still believed in the ‘infinite’. It is a mindset that still prevails. In a warped sort of way that is still playing out in India today.

It was the coming of the Huns after the Terrible Plague of 167 AD that shook up society in the Punjab, with Lahore being terribly hit. The last of the Huns was a cruel ruler named Mihirakula, whose capital city was Sialkot, who took a dislike of Buddhism after a Buddhist teacher refused to teach him because of his extreme cruelty. This son of Toramana the Hun decided to destroy all Buddhist monasteries and shrines in the year 523 AD. He allegedly converted to Shaivism, an extreme form of Hinduism which is today allegedly practiced by India’s present ruler.

Faith returned to the hands of the Brahmin priests and the rulers they backed. So for well over 700 years the city of ancient Lahore was almost purely Buddhist. The various invasions, seven of them being very severe, eliminated Buddhist temples. There is just one left near Lahore in Sheikhupura’s Salamatpura, and it is called the Gulsherbutt Temple. The best of them are in Taxila and Inner Sindh.

So we have yet another religion that prevailed over the lives of people in Lahore. Come to think of it with every new religion an era of intolerance prevailed, just as inside Mochi Gate these days the Lal Khoo where Guru Arjan was imprisoned and Mian Mir came every day to pray, is today ‘captured’ by a money-extracting priest. How dare anyone challenge his newly-acquired domain? Beliefs of every shade, when in power, impose themselves over the rational. Such has been the ways for centuries.