Correcting the Sri Lankan lonely planet

I excerpt the following from a recent message sent to the editors of
the Lonely Planet.  I, for one, find this hilarious.  E.M.
-------
Of your various guides to Asia, I have been the most impressed by the
Laotian manual --and I am the least impressed by the Sri Lankan.  Many
of the basic facts about Theravada Buddhist history, etc., that are
expressed in the Lao guidebook could be copied into the Sri Lankan
guide.  As it stands now, there are many problems with the latter
text.
...
All references are to the 9th edition (Sri Lanka L.P.), 2003 --by page
number & column.

...
Pg. 31, col. 1: "Strictly speaking, Buddhism is not a religion since
it is not centred on a god..."
   I rather wonder if your Lonely Planet guide to Haiti claims that
Voodoo is "not a religion" in a similar manner!  How about Taoism or
Confucianism in the Lonely Planet on China?  It is really quite
laughable to foist a Christian definition of religion on the rest of
the world; more than a billion of the earth's people identify
themselves with one of the four religions I have mentioned above that
are "not centred on a god" (i.e., Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, &
Afro-Caribbean mysticism), so I hardly feel the need to argue further
that this is a poor basis for claiming that Buddhism is "not a
religion".  However, even if your authors were to claim this, they
should then be consistent, for on pg. 33 they then describe Medieval
Sri Lanka as a "Buddhist Theocracy" --but to what god does the "Theos"
in the term "Theocracy" refer?  In any case, it is both meaningless
and offensive to state that Buddhism is not a religion; it is a method
of salvation, preached by a formal organization of monks, and
practiced as a formal moral code by millions of laypeople --if this
does not satisfy the definition of "religion", what does?

Pg. 31, col. 1: "The most recent Buddha was born ... around 563 B.C."
   The traditionally ascribed date is 624 B.C. (i.e., circa 80 years
before his death in 544 B.C.), and (setting all questions of the truth
aside) this is the date that modern Sri Lankans believe.  I must
emphatically point out that the speculative date of 560 B.C. is simply
a rough calculation based on the assumption that Ashoka was converted
218 years after the death of the Buddha --i.e., both dates are
probably wrong, but the later date has neither any special credibility
nor any practical value for travellers in Sri Lanka (as all the locals
will disagree with it).  I would guess that whatever source you've
taken 563 from (rather than 560) has made a few errors in converting
back and forth between the lunar and solar calendars; I've never read
an argument for that date specifically.

Pg. 31, col. 2: "Starting around the time of Ashoka, a schism
developed in the Buddhist world..."
   On the contrary, the schism developed a minimum of one hundred and
twenty years before Ashoka, during the reign of king Kalasoka (a.k.a.
king Kakavanna).  The latter king's name is sometimes written
Kala-Ashoka, and, resultantly, some Westerners get the name this king
confused with Ashoka; however, it is rather damning that neither your
authors nor their editors check their facts.  The schism that is
described is variously ascribed a date of circa 444 B.C. or circa 380
B.C (Ashoka's dates are all circa 262 B.C.).

Pg. 31, col. 2: "During his lifetime a political revolution was
underway.  Tribal clans were replaced with monarchies.  Legend tells
that he was a prince, but the Buddhist scriptures also portray him as
a displaced clan member unhappy with the loss of liberty under
autocratic monarchs."
   Unless your authors have been reading a lot of Sri Lankan Communist
Party pamphlets, I can hardly imagine what source they could cite for
this claim!  While there are many wierd political fictions that modern
authors assign to the Buddha (and the historical era he lived
through), I assure you that absolutely no reputable historical study
would say anything of the kind.  The simplest way to correct this
statement is simply to delete it from the next edition of the Lonely
Planet; if you'd actually like me to draft you something about
socio-political trends in India (circa 500 B.C.!) I'd be happy to
supply a short essay --but I don't know why the authors of your guide
are making such clumsy attempts at fabricating history in the first
place.  I would invite your authors (Plunkett & Ellemor) to comb
through the "Buddhist scriptures" that they so vaguely cite to find a
single passage that "portrays" the Buddha in this way --indeed, it
would be quite hilarious if they could find any passage that describes
such an historical "loss of liberty" of any kind.  Further down the
same column it is suggested that the later Buddhist monks contradicted
this early anti-monarchial teaching by giving "moral sanction to
monarchies"; this would, presumably, be an historical claim based on
the comparative reading of early and late Theravada texts?  I am very
familiar with the Pali canon, and also very familiar with some of the
modern political appropriations that can be found in India --but even
in the radical pamphlets of the "Dalit liberation" movements I have
never found such an absurd political claim as what your guide-book
suggests in this passage.

Pg. 32, col. 1: "Sri Lankan Buddhists saw that Mahayana Buddhism and
its pantheon of new Buddhas and dieties was coming to resemble
Hinduism ... and so the Sri Lankan Buddhists stuck to Theravada."
   This is the sort of "supposedly harmless" generalization that is (in
fact) completely unhistorical, false, and vaguely offensive --although
few Sinhalese would bestir themselves to contradict it.  There is not
a single historical source that states that the Theravada repudiated
the Mahayana because of its "resemblance to Hinduism"; however, we
have an e_xtremely detailed list of the reasons for this (historical)
split provided by the Kathavatthu (a text roughly dated to the time of
Ashoka), and by the accounts of the Theravada repudiation of the
Mahasanghikas in the Vinaya and the Mahavamsa.  In general, it is
offensive to suggest that Theravada orthodoxy has been defined by a
fear of "coming to resemble Hinduism"; on the contrary, the Theravada
tradition has preserved some elements of ancient Hinduism that can no
longer be found in the modern religion (e.g., Indra appears as a
satirical figure in modern Hinduism (a fat, drunken, blundering
womanizer, to be precise), a much different character from the king of
the gods found in the Pali canon or the (even earlier) Vedas).  I must
point out that the single most important difference that drove the
split between Theravada and Mahayana was the question of handling
money: the Theravada took the Buddha's monastic discipline very
seriously, and refused to touch money, amass possessions, and so on,
along with a litany of other rules and philosophical tenets that the
Kathavatthu claim the other schools disregarded; the Mahasanghika
monks took a pragmatic attitude toward "fundraising", and lived in
relative luxury --many Mahayana monks still do.  Thus, as a matter of
well attested historical fact, we should conclude that (1) the
definition of the Theravada (to the exclusion of the Mahayana) in Sri
Lanka was largely based on the greater importance assigned to monastic
discipline and orthodox readings of the Vinaya (monastic rules) along
with a miscellany of philosophical controversies (in all of which the
Theravada support their position by a very close reading of the source
texts), and (2) that definition of Theravada orthodoxy was NOT IN ANY
WAY anti-Hindu (although some modern Sinhalese authors are definitiely
anti-Hindu in the bias they bring to bear on Buddhist history!) --on
the contrary, Pali literature and Theravada orthodoxy have preserved
some elements of Hinduism that are forgotten in the Mahayana and
modern Hinduism.  Given that there is a slow-motion civil war in Sri
Lanka, some degree of extra sensitivity should be taken in writing
this sort of material.

Pg. 33, col. 1: "Sri Lankan monks later took Theravada Buddhism to
Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Cambodia, and parts of South
Vietnam."
   There are several factual errors here.  The first is that the vague
word "later" seems to mean "later than the 10th century", as it refers
back to the timeline described in the previous paragraph.  If so, it
is a gross historical error on the part of your authors; if not, it is
a gross error of style, and the editor should have caught it on either
account.  The second problem here is that the Mon (a minority people
found primarily in Burma and Thailand) did have a tradition of
Theravada Buddhism that began independently of the Sinhalese, and that
traces its origins directly to India without Sri Lanka as an
intermediary; many Burmese and Thais claim that this tradition
pre-dates the arrival of Buddhism in Sri Lanka (on nationalistic more
than historical grounds).  The hard evidence for the debate is
provided by the Pali inscriptions from both the Mon and the Pyu (i.e.,
pre-Burmese peoples of what is now Burma) dated to circa 400 A.D.
This is more of a problem (for your authors in revising the above
passage) than you might at first imagine: in brief outline, the Mon
imparted their tradition of Theravada Buddhism (directly) to the
Burmese, Cambodians, and Thais --and probably in that order (Burma
officially appropriated Theravada Buddhism from the Mon in 1057, and
the Cambodians seem to have done the same (with fewer historical clues
left behind) during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; the ethnic
Thais seem to have gradually followed the Cambodian trend over the
following centuries).  Because of their somewhat tenuous claim to this
"Mon heritage", both the Burmese and the Thais will tenaciously deny
that they received Theravada Buddhism "later" and "from Sri Lanka".
On a more factual note, all the evidence we have indicates that
Cambodia, etc., received their Buddhist missionaries directly from
Southern India, rather than Sri Lanka (N. Ray's detailed study points
out that all early Theravada materials in early South-East Asia are in
Pallava script, i.e., a dravidian (or "Tamil") South-Indian script,
whereas early Mahayana materials are in North-Indian orthography); in
fact, your entire introduction seems to overlook the fact that Sri
Lanka itself benefited from the waves of Buddhist missionaries that
(now Hindu) peninsular India generated for centuries, and reflects the
(biased) modern materials that try to anachronistically depict the
Tamil-Sinhalese rivalry as an "immortal" feature of the region's
religions and politics.  On the contrary, take a look at the
Nagarjunakonda inscription (3rd century A.D.), and you will see that
Southernmost India sent Buddhist missionaries to Burma, Sri Lanka, and
even China.  In any case, by the 10th century A.D., nobody in Burma
was waiting around for Buddhism to "arrive" from Sri Lanka; one way or
another, the passage should be re-written.

Pg. 34, col. 1: "... there is no unchanging soul that is reborn after
life, but a consciousness that develops and evolves spiritually until
it reaches the goal of nirvana or oneness with all."
   Although this kind of generalization may be good enough to impress a
small crowd at the YMCA in Avenel, it is not factually correct, it is
not supported by the primary source documents, and it should not have
gotten past a responsible editor.  The specific notion that "a
consciousness ... develops" from one life to the next is reufted at
length by the Buddha himself in several parts of the Theravada canon,
perhaps the most salient being the Maha-Tanha-Sankhaya-Sutta
(M.N.-1-4-6; in other words, you'll find it in the first volume of the
Majjhima Nikaya, sutta #38, if you want to look it up).  The notion of
"spiritual evolution" is quite vague, but I would nevertheless defy
anyone to substantiate this claim by finding any passage in the Pali
canon that could justify this characterization; there are certainly
Mahayana notions along these lines, but in Theravada Buddhism no human
being is more "evolved" than anyone else (and, moreover, nobody has a
"spirit" or "soul" of any kind), and, correspondingly, even an
illiterate thief or serial murderer is capable of attaining Nibbana in
this lifetime if they study the Buddha's philosophy and practice with
zeal (this is a celebrated distinction of the Theravada tradition; the
murderer who became a monk (Angulimala) is one of the best known
figures from the Suttas in modern Sri Lanka).  The second major error
here is the notion that nirvana means "oneness with all"; again, this
could be vaguely suggested in the context of Mahayana Buddhism
(although even there it is not correct; the Mahayana Philosophers
claim that opposites inter-penetrate one another, but their argument
is that Samsara is reciprocal with Nirvana, i.e., the very opposite of
the Lonely Planet's description that Nirvana is a "goal" of "oneness"
separate from mundane life) but it is really inexcusable in the
context of Sri Lankan Theravada orthodoxy.  The editors should consult
any authoritative book on the subject (e.g., Richard F. Gombrich,
1991, _Buddhist Precept and Practice_) and use an inoffensive and
adequate definition of Nirvana (and Theravada Buddhist doctrine
generally) based on those sources.  It may be asked why the Sanskrit
term "Nirvana" is being used instead of the Pali (so too for the word
"Dharma"); but I suppose this is a matter of editorial policy?

Eisel Mazard,
Vientiane, Lao P.D.R.
www.pratyeka.org/pali