At first I did not know what to make of this book. As a prologue to its main protagonist, the Buddha, Pankaj Mishra describes his own life after graduating from Nehru University in New Delhi. In a quest for a new home he finds himself near Simla, a former British colonial resort in the foothills of the Himalayas. His prose is exquisite as he recalls the sights, sounds and scents of the region. Renting a small cottage to read and write, he starts to reminisce about his earlier discovery of Buddhism. A friend took him to Lumbini in Nepal, birthplace of the Buddha, where he was amazed to learn there was a man behind the myth. His project became an attempt to retrace a cultural history of the Buddha.
Much of the life of the Buddha, and India's pre-Islamic past, was still undiscovered in the early 19th century. The Buddha was a historical person, not a deity. Although similar to Jesus and Muhammad, less was known about him. Inscriptions, sculptures and monuments lay buried or covered by jungle. British colonists, reflecting Enlightenment interests in ancient Egypt, helped to recover the lost history and literature of India. Buddhism had been disseminated to China from India in the 1st century AD, and a great repository of translated texts awaited study at the end of the 19th century. The Sanchi stupa, the ancient university at Nalanda, and the Ashokan pillars were gradually unearthed.
Mishra continues with the development of Buddhism from earlier Vedic and Upanishad beliefs. As life on the northern plains became urbanized in the 6th century BC, ancient rituals and rigid social classes began to be questioned. Less bound by agrarian dependence on natural cycles, merchants superseded priests. Karma explained social inequality by attributing present suffering to past deeds. Rebirth insured a never ending cycle of future accountability. The Buddha challenged the concepts of caste, accumulation of merit and an enduring self. The adoption of Buddhism by Ambedkar and the Dalits in the mid-20th century mirrored this rejection of the class system that oppressed them.
A theme of this book is that traditional cultures have been uprooted and secular philosophies took their place. Mishra compares the time period of the Buddha (6th century BC) to the Enlightenment (18th century AD). Without feudalism, monarchy and guild, clan or sect, individual people were left to determine their own existential meaning. In the 19th century western economic, scientific and nationalistic ideologies are examined as they tried to replace prior social cohesion. Nietzsche's pronouncement 'God is Dead' is invoked, as are the modern equivalents of questions the Buddha had previously addressed. Newton and Darwin aren't covered here, and I'm curious of their omission.
With many of Mishra's efforts, literary matters prevail. The philosophy of Pyrrho, founded during Alexander's invasion of India in 325 BC is discussed, and the questions Menander, Hellenic king of Bactria, posed to Buddhists in 150 BC. German writers such as Schegel and Goethe looked to ancient Sanskrit works for poetic inspiration. Hesse, Wagner and Borges play minor roles. Influences to the thinking of Hume, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are meditated upon. Einstein saw Buddhism as a religion of the future, since it fit into his scientific views. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and Schroedinger's cat are certainly suspect. Mishra's command of the western canon is impressive.
This book is a stimulating mix of memoir, history, and philosophy. Mishra moves freely from poetic accounts of his personal journey to a clear exposition of past ideas and events. The structure of sections at times is disconcerting, and his ruminations ramble far afield. If you have further appetite for reading about the Buddha's life, I recommend Christopher Beckwith's 'Greek Buddha'. It traverses the ancient terrain from a linguistic approach, while Mishra focuses on modern connections to the Buddha's world view. Born and educated in India, Mishra has no trace of Edward Said's rancor towards western literature. The book may be his best, although others have come close.
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