Buddhists of Kasmir (An Old and Rare Book)

It is Louis Renou who drew the attention of the author on the particular situation of Kashmir in the context of the Indian culture.

Kasmir indeed acts as an extraordinary mediator between two worlds, India and Tibet. Protected by its geographical position, the country constituted a particularly prestigious cultural centre in Northern India at the epoch where this very northern region was the pray of profound troubles and was progressively gained by Islam.

The Buddhism that the Kasmiris conveyed to their homeland and to Tibet originated from the monastic universities of North Eastern India. Too often still, it is depreciated as "late Buddhism", qualification which betrays more ignorance and misunderstanding than an objective approach of the subject. However this last phase of Buddhism in the Indian soil was fruitfully inheritated by the Kasmiric and Tibetans. A careful analysis brings to light that this Buddhism was not, at the time, deprived from its scholastic, speculative as well as mystic activities; it also shows that the Kasmiri Buddhists have not been strangers to this internal development of the though on its way to Tibetan Buddhism.

Jean Naudou (1921) is at present professo of Sanskrit and of Indian culture at the University of Lille III (France). Earlier he was also a professor at the University of Brussels (Belgium). As a research-Scholar of the French Council of Scientific Research (C.N.R.S) he pursued research on the role of the Kasmiri Buddhists in the diffusion o Buddhism in Tibet as well as on their place in the development of the Buddhist thought His interest in Buddhism convinced him later to write a biography of the Enlightex one (Le Bouddha, Paris, 1973). For the last few years, he has also devoter attention to the temary structure which appear at various places of the India thought and which can be related to a wide Indo-European background.

Besides, the author has constantly show through all his life of researcher, a deep interest for the study of Indian art, mop particularly in defence of the "method c evolution of (decorative) motifs which ha been systematically applied by Ph. Sten and his students in the field of Indian an South-East Asian history of art (Au Servic d'une biologie de l'art, with English Summaries, Villeneuve-d'Ascq, 1978).

J. Naudou has otherwise contributed t many scientific journals of Indology and ha participated to various congresses.

The vision which the educated public and even the non orientalist historians possess of the ancient Indian religious history is on the whole quite reduced: Buddhism which has, from Aśoka's time to the Hephtalits' invasions held a first place on the Indian cultural scene, enters a phase of decline after the death of Harsa and the journey of Hiouan-ts'ang. The Huns have dealt on monastic Buddhism a blow from which it will not recover. Everywhere the great Chinese pilgrim has only met with ruins and empty monasteries. The zeal of Harsa could give some revival to the Church. But after his death, the philosophical propaganda of Sankara and his followers gains to the Vedanta all a thinking elite and the glow of bhakti cults, particularly fit for exalting the religious sensibility of the popular masses, succeeds in draining the faithful to the sects of Hinduism. Only Bengal and Magadha, where the Palas protect the dharma of the Tathāgata, Ceylon and Nepal (which already are no more India) gather still many Buddhists. Muslim invasions, by destroying the universities of Magadha and Bengal, deal the last blow on the community and the last faithful laybrothers, deprived from the support of the clergy, are absorbed by Hinduism. Buddhism, by the way, had deeply changed, if not degenerated, and through the intermediary of "Tantrism" had, for a long time already, bordered on Hinduism in its cult as in its mythology. The purity of discipline had unbent among the ecclesiastics and an abundant magic, touched by gloss, had replaced the austerity of the eightfold way or the sublime abnegation of the beings of bodhi. Simultaneously, in the arts - literary or plastic - the taste, the sensibility, the spirit of the piece of work, whether they were of a Buddhic or of a Hinduistic inspiration, have subtly changed.

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