DISKUS Vol. 5 (1999)
http://www.uni-marburg.de/fb11/religionswissenschaft/journal/diskus

MULTICULTURALISM IN ASIAN RELIGIONS: NORTH INDIA, CENTRAL ASIA AND CHINA IN ANCIENT TIMES 
Max Deeg 

Department for the History of Religions
University of Hannover, Germany
Email: Deeg-Max@t-online.de


====================================================
ABSTRACT
The first part of the paper tries to show that multiculturalism is not a phenomenon restricted to modern societies and cultures but that it is also found in most cultural stages and processes of the past, although these facts are not always easy to detect and to describe due to the low quantity and quality of material available to the historian. Both points become obvious in drawing only the outlines of multicultural processes and intercultural exchange in the histories of South, Central and East Asian cultures in the second part of the paper.
====================================================



     Academic research in the human sciences and anthropology has been focused in the last decades on the new hyphenized prefixes such as cross-, inter-, multi-, etc.. It is usually assumed that the fields of research described by the newly-created terminology consist of objects of research which are recent phenomena in modern societies and cultures. Thus multiculturalism is usually discovered, described and analyzed in the contexts of globalisation, of migration caused by colonialism, and of post-worldwar conflicts.

It has to be pointed out, however, that in the history of mankind and cultures there has probably never been a pure monoculturalism. History gives us many examples of different cultural entities or elements in what comes down to us through the historical documents as one and the same socio-political unit. These documents of the past, which usually represent an idealized concept of ethnocentrism or political centralism culminating in the nationalisms of the last century, do not allow for an objective reconstruction of the past – if such a reconstruction is actually possible. Their exclusive utility in the investigation of history - political, social or religious - has legitimately been criticized as aiding the historian´s process of reconstruction instead of showing and depicting the multi-causal and multi-levelled historical reality, a reality which has to be assumed behind these reconstructions not least by means of parallelisation to and with present reality. This is all true, but it does not justify a restriction on synchronic – for a historian a paradox in itself - and contemporaneous subjects of research.

The modern world seems not to be so unique and special to the historian familiar with more than the small window of European history - nor is multiculturalism. The assumption that multiculturalism is a recent phenomenon seems to be a Eurocentric construction derived from the very fact that in the European world cultural differences correspond with geographical, political or ethnic ones – an opinion not least suggested by the relative religious unity achieved by a common Christianity. When we leave Europe and go beyond the horizon of a cultural unity based both historically and geographically on the delusory idea of a unitary Islamicized Near East, the situation becomes quite different. The Far East with its geographical boundaries, its ethnic varieties and its historical dimensions, presents us in many cases with a multiculturalism which has to be taken into account before speaking of a special multiculturalism of modern times.

Methodologically speaking – and for an investigation of history this means mainly the historical method - it is true that it is sometimes impossible and at best hard and painstaking to research historical multiculturalism in Asia or anywhere in the world, as there is no way to investigate directly by the use of questionnaires or interviews. This, however, does not mean that it is not possible to undertake such research.

What I will attempt in this short paper is to point out some aspects of multiculturalism in certain regions, namely India and China connected by Central Asia, which have been from a relatively early period of time a vast area of trade exchange <1> which eventually led to cultural and religious variety in the singular regions concerned.

In early South and East Asia there are two major cultural units. In the Southwest of the continental mass of Asia there is Indian culture with all its historically developed and geographically defined variety, in a subcontinent mainly accessible through routes in the Northeast and in the Northwest. To the Northeast of the Asian landmass lies the Great Empire of the Chinese, known from a very early period for its ethnic and cultural centralism despite a continual exchange from this time on with the desert and steppe regions of Central Asia to the West, either through attempts to colonize the tribes living there or by being invaded by them.<2>

Investigating history under the given topic, we have to ask the question: under which circumstances and premises are we able to speak of multiculturalism in historical contexts? It is quite clear that we can only grasp a small part of the cultural contact and – more important for multiculturalism – the longer-lasting co-existence and even mixture of cultures in one and the same area from the documents available to us. First, we have to differentiate between multiculturalism in a politically and/or socially defined unit or area and multiculturalism observed in an individual person. The documents give witness to both, even when the following passages focus on the socio-political level.

In India, with her tendency of ahistorical literature, and where the main bulk of material comes from the field of archaeology and art or only by evidence of epigraphical or numismatic sources, we are able to get a glimpse of individuals representative of mulitculturalism. In China, with its biographical tradition developing parallel to official historiographical writing, we are presented with much more material concerning both a social-political multiculturalism and an individual one. Central Asia - by which I refer to the regions between the two major cultural blocs of India and China, the great mountain ranges of the Pamir and the Karakorum and the Tarim-basin (Chinese Turkestan) - mainly comes into the focus of history through the Chinese accounts and Buddhist missions starting evidently during the 1st century and increasing into the 2nd century A.D. The multiculturalism of this region is clearly shown through the variety of languages and archaeological remains. It is from this area, in the period of the Tang (A.D. 618-906), that we can also observe a religious pluralism radiating even into the Chinese Empire.

Starting with India - and leaving aside the Indus-culture with its problems of reconstructing historical reality (Mohenjo Daro, Harappa and the relation to Ancient Mesopotamia, ca. 2600-1900 B.C.) - the first major multicultural situation has to have been the Indo-Aryan migration through the passes of the Northwest into the subcontinent and the subsequent 'conquest' of the authochthonous population around the middle of the 2nd millenium B.C..  This was, in contrast to the one-sided descriptions of the Vedic texts, probably rather a kind of cultural hodge-podge than a real Aryan superstratial culture. In general, it was mainly the Northwest – the cultural melting-pot called Gandhara - which was the first area of infiltration of foreign elements and the stage for cultural interdependence and variety, and it remained so for two millenia.<3>

The next clearly traceable wave of cultural infiltration was the Hellenization instigated through the military advances of Alexander into the Indus valley (326/325 B.C.) <4> and in the centuries to follow the building-up of the Indo-Greek kingdoms in the Northwest of India and in the Northeast-Iranian border regions.<5> The direct external evidence of this multi-cultural and multi-religious situation in literature are the famous 'Questions of (King) Milinda' (Milindapanha), written in Pali, the language of the Theravadin school of Buddhism and containing the discussion between the Indo-Greek king Menander (Milinda, 2nd century B.C.) and the Buddhist monk Nagasena about questions of religion and philosophy.<6> There are also some archaeological artefacts, especially of numismatic character, which show the multiculturalism practised by these rulers as melting Greek religious ideas with elements from an Iranian or Indian background.<7>  Shortly before the establishment of these Greek states in the Northwest, the empire of India´s greatest ruler, the Maurya-emperor Asoka (3rd century B.C.), reveals multi-cultural and multi-religious features, too, proved by the famous inscriptions ordered by the emperor to be carved on rocks and pillars in all border-regions of his vast empire.<8>

Northwest India however had to wait for the coming of the Indo-Scythian peoples from Central Asia and the building-up of their empire, to see the Indo-Iranian-Greek-Nomadic melting-pot at its height (1st - 4th century). The Kusana-kings,<9> the most famous one being Kaniska, used elements from at least four cultural strata - Indian, Iranian, Greek and their own nomadic-tribal tradition - to form their politico-cultural language of symbols. This period was also the first time that the mighty Chinese empire of the Later Han had a common frontier with an Indianized kingdom, as the Kusanas for two centuries or so held control of their Central Asian homelands. In the region of today´s Chinese Turkestan (the modern Chinese Autonomous Region of Xinjiang) which lies between China and the Indo-Scythian kingdom, arose city-states whose archaeological remains in the Tarim Basin show a great degree of Indianization, even if it was Han China that claimed sovereignty over them.<10>  The late Kusana period shows its multiculturalism in two schools of art; in the fully developed Graeco-Indian art of Gandhara and in the Indian school of Mathura, both depicting mainly Buddhist motifs.<11>

The distinction between these two schools of art also reflects, however, the disintegration of the Kusana empire into regional units, with the Central Indian areas, including Mathura, being dominated by Imperial Gupta rulers from the 3rd century onward.<12> These rulers had a strong affinity to Hinduism, already clearly divided into the two branches of Visnuism and Sivaism. But the Gupta period (ca. A.D. 320-500) was also a period of prosperity for Buddhism which was tolerated, supported and even protected by the Gupta emperors, despite their clear official devotion to the Hindu gods.

The reign of the Guptas was also a time when active contact between China and India began. Until the end of the fourth century this contact was restricted to the passive acceptance of Buddhism and cultural elements reflected in literature, art and ideas (less in material culture) transmitted by Indian and Central Asian monks coming to China as missionaries. In the beginning this was mainly via the land route over the great mountain ranges and through the deserts of Central Asia.<13> At that time there must already have been multiculturalism in China, at least behind the walls of the big Chinese monasteries where the foreign ´barbarian´ monks worked as translators and teachers. We do not know much about their situation, of which we can only get a glimpse every once in a while from the hagiographically tainted passages in the Chinese monk biographies. But here, from the fifth century on, began an active search for the essence of Buddhism which was thought to be concealed in the great monasteries of Buddhist India. It was the beginning of that great period of about 600 years in which Chinese Buddhist pilgrims went to India against all odds, in search of the Law. Where they left records, one can sometimes get the taste of the multicultural situation into which they were cast.<14>

But not only Chinese pilgrims were confronted with foreign cultural and religious elements. Already after the fall of the Han empire (A.D. 220), North China especially was dominated for centuries by multi-ethnic and multi-cultural political entities, smaller and bigger ones, some more long-lasting, some rather short-lived; the periods of the 'Three kingdoms' (Chin. Sanguo, A.D. 220-265) and of the 'Northern and Southern Dynasties' (Chin. Nanbei-chao, A.D. 317-589).  Due to the character of the Chinese historiographies, which concentrate on the inherited patterns and symbols of the Han peoples, unfortunately we do not know too much about the processes of interchange and the final Sinification of the conquering barbarian tribal rulers of this period.<15>  It is one of the ironies of history that it is precisely the dynasties which united China again under one emperor which give us our account of the multicultural and multireligious variety that existed in the large Chinese cities of the Sui (A.D. 581-618) and Tang dynasties. We know, for instance, that in the capital of the Tang,  in the metropolis of Chang'an, special quarters were reserved for different ethnicities with their own religious and cultural background, which must have led in some cases to a vivid cultural exchange.<16> This exchange led sometimes to a change of religious and cultural settings, which can be observed for example in the gradual processes of Sinification of the Manichaean and Nestorian communities in the capital, documented in the texts translated into and written in Chinese.<17>  This change was mainly caused by the multireligious climate which brought these groups to adapt their teachings more and more to Buddhist and Daoist forms and contents.<18>  

The examples mentioned (and we have not even touched upon the questions of Sinification of Buddhism or the 'Buddhicisation' of Daoism under the multireligious conditions of China in the first millenium of our era, the  field being too vast),<19> are good historical touchstones for the above mentioned assumption of the uniqueness of multi-cultural and multi-religious situations and processes of modern times. This is because they very often show exactly the same features as in present times; on the one side reinforcing their own ethnic, cultural and religious peculiarities and on the other side adapting more and more to the host culture, to the extent of losing their own cultural or religious identity in a multicultural environment. These features are so often described as typical processes of modern multicultural societies that the fact is forgotten that the past was very often much less nationalistic but more multi-cultural and multi-religious, at least for a longer period of time than the ideologies of the last century would like to have us believe.

==========================
Notes:

(1) Cp. for China: Xinru Liu, Ancient India and Ancient China – Trade and Religious Exchanges AD 1-600, Delhi 1988; Ying-shih Yü, Trade and Expansion in Han China – A Study in the Structure of Sino-Barbarian Economic Relations, Berkeley / Los Angeles 1967.

(2) Cp. the relevant passages in: Rene Grousset, The Empire of the Steppes. A History of Central Asia, New Jersey 1970; Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, Cambridge 1990.

(3) On the Indo-Aryans cp. G.Erdosy (ed.), The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South-Asia. Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity, Berlin 1995 (Indian Reprint Delhi 1997).

(4) Cp. still J.W.McCrindle, The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great, Westminster 1896.

(5) Cp. W.W.Tarn, The Greeks in Bactria & India, Cambridge 1951; A.K.Narain, The Indo-Greeks, Oxford 1957.

(6) The work has no direct Greek influence and – beside the name of the king – is ahistorical and anachronistic: cp. O.v.Hinüber, A Handbook of Pali Literature, Berlin, New York 1996, 83. However, the fact that the Indian compilators kept the Graeco-Indian setting gives it the flavour of the multiculturalism that must have existed in the Northwestern regions in that era.

(7) Cp. Tarn, op.cit., and Narain, op.cit..

(8) Cp. his Greek-Aramaic bilingual version of the edicts (E.Lamotte, Histoire du Bouddhisme Indien des origines a l'ere Saka, Louvain 1958, 789ff., and the additions in the English version, Louvain 1976, 743) and his adress to all religious groups; sramanas  (Buddhist, Jain and other groups) and brahmanas.

(9) Cp. H.-J.Klimkeit, Die Seidenstrasse, Handelsweg und Kulturbruecke zwischen Morgen- und Abendland (The Silk-Road; Trade Route and Cultural Bridge between Orient and Occident), Köln 1990 (2nd ed.), 137ff.; D.C.Sircar in: R.C.Majumdar (ed.), The History and Culture of the Indian People, Vol.2, Bombay 1951, 136ff.; J.Harmatta (ed.), History and Civilizations of Central Asia: Vol.II: The development of sedentary and nomadic civilizations: 700 B.C. to A.D. 250, Paris 1994.

(10) Cp. A.F.P.Hulsewe, M.A.N.Loewe, China in Central Asia – The Early Stage: 125 B.C. – A.D. 23 (An Annotated Translation of Chapters 61 and 96 of the History of the Former Han Dynasty), Leiden 1979; Yü Ying-Shih in: D.Twitchett, M.Loewe (ed.), The Cambridge History of China, Vol.1: The Ch´in and Han Empires 221 B.C. – A.D.220, Cambridge 1986, 377ff..

(11) Cp. D.E.Klimburg-Salter (ed.), Buddha in Indien. Die frühindische Skulptur von Koenig Asoka bis zur Guptazeit (The Buddha in India. Early Indian Sculpture from King Asoka to the Gupta period), Milano, Wien 1995.

(12) For the Guptas see R.K.Mookerji, The Gupta Empire, Delhi 1973 (5th ed.); A. Agrawal, Rise and Fall of the Imperial Guptas, Delhi 1989.

(13) For these early missionaries cp. E.Zuercher, The Buddhist Conquest of China, The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China, 2 vols., Leiden 1972 (2nd ed.); Z.Tsukamoto, L.Hurvitz, A History of Early Chinese Buddhism – From its Introduction to the Death of Hui-yüan, 2 vols., Tokyo 1985; a translation of the biographies of the earliest of these figures see: R.Shih, Biographies des moines éminents (Kao Seng Tchouan) (Biographies of Eminent Monks (Gaoseng-zhuan)), Louvain 1968. Central Asia itself shows the Indian and Chinese impact and its multicultural, multireligious and multiethnic specific characteristics especially in the masterpieces of art that were found by M.A.Stein, P.Pelliot, A.Grünwedel and A.Lecoq and other foreign explorers along the famous silk roads. For the regions see B.A.Litvinsky (ed.), History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Vol.III: The crossroads of civilizations: A.D. 250 to 750, Paris 1996.

(14) For an overview of the Chinese Pilgrims see A.Levy, Les pelerins bouddhistes de la Chine aux Indes (The Buddhist Chinese Pilgrims in India), Paris 1995; P.Magnin in: J.Chélini, H.Branthomme (ed.), Histoire des pèlerinages non chrétiens – Entre magique et sacré: le chemin des dieux (History of the Non-Christian Pilgrimages – Between Magic and Sacred: The Path of the Gods), Paris 1987, 278ff.; on the relation of cultural and religious background cp. M.Deeg, Religion versus Kultur: Bemerkungen zum „interkulturellen" Diskurs chinesischer buddhistischer Mönche in Indien (Religion versus Culture: Notes on the „Intercultural" Discourse of Chinese Buddhist Monks in India), in: D.Lüddeckens, Begegnung von Religionen und Kulturen (Meeting of Religions and Cultures), Festschrift für Norbert Klaes, Dettelbach 1998, 277ff..

(15) It is not by chance that a competent history of the period in question has still to be written; on the Toba-Wei cp. W.Eberhard, Das Toba-Reich Nordchinas, eine soziologische Untersuchung, Leiden 1949.

(16) Cp. the article on Chang´an by D.Kuhn in: Kuhn (ed.), Chinas Goldenes Zeitalter. Die Tang-Dynastie (618-907 n.Chr.) und das kulturelle Erbe der Seidenstrasse (China´s Golden Era. The Tang-Dynastie (...) and the Cultural Heritage of the Silkroad), Heidelberg 1993, 34ff.; on the material impact of the multiregional trade on Tang-China cp. E.H.Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand. A Study of T´ang Exotics, Berkeley 1963.

(17) On the Chinese Tang Nestorianica cp. still P.Y.Saeki, The Nestorian Documents and Relics in China, Tokyo 1951 (2nd ed.); on the Nestorian stele of Chang´an, the most famous document of early Christianity in China, see now: P.Pelliot, A.Forte (ed.), L´inscription nestorienne de Si-Ngan-Fou (The Nestorian Inscription of Xi´an-fu), Kyoto, Paris 1996. On the Manichaean documents in Chinese see H.Schmidt-Glintzer, Chinesische Manichaica mit textkritischen Anmerkungen und einem Glossar, Wiesbaden 1987.

(18) Cp. e.g. P.Bryder, The Chinese Transformation of Manichaeism. A Study of Chinese Manichaean Terminology, Lund 1985.

(19) On this subject see P.Demiéville, Philosophy and Religion from Han to Sui, in: Twitchett, Loewe, op.cit., 808ff.; E.Zürcher, Buddhist Influence on Early Taoism – A Survey of Scriptural Evidence, in: T´oung-Pao 66 (1980), 84-137.

(The bibliographical data given in the notes are meant for further reading and are neither up-to-date nor do they claim completeness.)

END