Gautama Buddha, of Buddhism fame, is one of the avatars of the god Vishnu in Vaishnava Hinduism. Of the ten major Vishnu avatars, he is considered as the ninth incarnation. His portrayal in Hinduism varies. In some texts such as the Puranas, he is portrayed as an avatar born to mislead those who deny the Vedic knowledge. In others such as Gitagovinda of Vaishnava poet Jayadeva, Vishnu incarnates as the Buddha to teach and to end animal slaughter.
Buddhists traditionally do not accept the Buddha to be a Vishnu avatar. The adoption of Buddha may have been a way to assimilate Buddhism into the fold of Hinduism. Much like Hinduism's adoption of the Buddha as an avatar, Buddhism legends too adopted Krishna in its Jataka Tales, claiming Krishna (Vishnu avatar) to be a character whom Buddha met and taught in his previous births.
Video Gautama Buddha in Hinduism
Avatar of Vishnu
The Buddha has been important to Hinduism since the ancient times, given his teachings and royal support. The Hindu views (Brahmanical tradition) for the Buddha have neither been consistent nor constant. They have ranged from actively contesting the Buddhist premises and theology to sharing or adopting terminology, concepts as well as more recently, the persona of the Siddhartha as someone who was born in and matured into the Buddha in a Brahmanical system. One such integration is through its mythology, where in Vaishnava Puranas, the Buddha is adopted as the ninth avatar of Vishnu.
In the Dasavatara stotra section of his Gita Govinda, the influential Vaishnava poet Jayadeva (13th century) includes the Buddha amongst the ten principal avatars of Vishnu and writes a prayer regarding him as follows:
O Keshava! O Lord of the universe! O Lord Hari, who have assumed the form of Buddha! All glories to You! O Buddha of compassionate heart, you decry the slaughtering of poor animals performed according to the rules of Vedic sacrifice.
This viewpoint of the Buddha as the avatar who primarily promoted ahimsa remains a popular belief amongst a number of modern Vaishnava organisations, including the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.
Maps Gautama Buddha in Hinduism
Buddha claimed as a Hindu
Scholars contest whether the Hindu perceptions and apologetic attempts to rationalize the Buddha within their fold is correct. Though an avatar of Vishnu, the Buddha is rarely worshipped like Krishna and Rama in Hinduism. According to John Holt, the Buddha was adopted as an avatar of Vishnu around the time the Puranas were being composed, in order to subordinate him into the Brahmanical ideology. Further adds Holt, various scholars in India, Sri Lanka and outside South Asia state that the colonial era and contemporary attempts to assimilate Buddha into the Hindu fold is a nationalistic political agenda, where "the Buddha has been reclaimed triumphantly as a symbol of indigenous nationalist understandings of India's history and culture".
Other scholars such as Hermann Oldenberg, Thomas Rhys Davids and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan have stated that there is much in common between the two religions. According to the British scholar and founder of Pali Text Society Rhys Davids, Buddha was "born, brought up, lived and died a Hindu". It is a misconception, states Rhys Davids, that Gautama Buddha was an enemy to Hinduism, nor did he seek to destroy an alleged system of "iniquity, oppression and fraud". Richard Gombrich, an Indologist and a professor of Buddhist Studies, and other scholars, the Buddha did not begin or pursue social reforms nor was he against caste althogether, rather his aim was at the salvation of those who joined his monastic order. Modernists, states Gombrich, keep picking up this "mistake from western authors". The Oxford professor and later President of India Radhakrishnan states that "Buddha did not feel that he was announcing a new religion" and considered Buddha to be a Hindu".
Texts
The Buddha is mentioned as an avatar of VIshnu in the Puranas and the epics such as:
- Harivamsa (1.41)
- Vishnu Purana (3.18)
- Bhagavata Purana (1.3.24, 2.7.37, 11.4.23)
- Garuda Purana (1.1, 2.30.37, 3.15.26)
- Agni Purana (16)
- Naradiya Purana (2.72)
- Linga Purana (2.71)
- Padma Purana (3.252)
In the Puranic texts, he is mentioned as one of the ten Avatars of Vishnu, usually as the ninth one. Another important scripture that mentions him as an avatar is Parashara's Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra (2:1-5/7).
Interpretations
Helmuth von Glasenapp attributed these developments to a Hindu desire to absorb Buddhism in a peaceful manner, both to win Buddhists to Vaishnavism and also to account for the fact that such a significant heresy could exist in India.
The times ascribed to one "Buddha" figure are contradictory and some put him in approximately 500 CE, with a lifetime of 64 years, describe him as having killed some persons, as following the Vedic religion, and having a father named Jina, which suggest that this particular figure might be a different person from Siddh?rta Gautama.
Mutual adoption of iconography
Chakra has been a historic identifier of Vishnu's dharma, but it as Dharmachakra is also an esteemed symbol in Buddhism for the Buddha's doctrine.
Mutual adoption of revered figures
While Hinduism adopted the Buddha in its mythology, Buddhism adopted the Hindu god Krishna in its own mythology. The story of Krishna occurs in the Jataka tales in Buddhism, for example. The Vidhurapandita Jataka mentions Madhura (Sanskrit: Mathura), the Ghata Jataka mentions Kamsa, Devagabbha (Sk: Devaki), Upasagara or Vasudeva, Govaddhana (Sk: Govardhana), Baladeva (Balarama), and Kanha or Kesava (Sk: Krishna, Keshava).
The Arjuna and Krishna interaction is missing in the Jataka version. In the Buddhist version, Krishna laments in uncontrollable sorrow when his son dies, and a Ghatapandita feigns madness to teach Krishna a lesson. The Jataka tale also includes an internecine destruction among his siblings after they all get drunk. Krishna also dies in the Buddhist legend by the hand of a hunter named Jara, but while he is traveling to a frontier city. Mistaking Krishna for a pig, Jara throws a spear that fatally pierces his feet, causing Krishna great pain and then his death.
At the end of this Ghata-Jataka discourse, the Buddhist text declares that Sariputta, one of the revered disciples of the Buddha in the Buddhist tradition, was incarnated as Krishna in his previous life to learn lessons on grief from the Buddha in his prior rebirth:
Then he [Master] declared the Truths, and identified the Birth: 'At that time, Ananda was Rohineyya, Sariputta was Vasudeva [Krishna], the followers of the Buddha were the other persons, and I myself was Ghatapandita."
While the Buddhist Jataka texts co-opt Krishna-Vasudeva and make him a student of the Buddha in his previous life, the Hindu texts co-opt the Buddha and make him an avatar of Vishnu.
Differences between Buddhism and Hinduism
While Buddha is included as an avatar of Vishnu in Hinduism, the two religions are different. Buddhism, like Hinduism and other major Indian religions, asserts that everything is impermanent (anicca), but, unlike them, also asserts that there is no permanent self or soul in living beings (anatt?). The ignorance or misperception (avijj?) that anything is permanent or that there is self in any being is considered a wrong understanding in Buddhism, and the primary source of clinging and dukkha.
Buddha endorsed and taught the concept of rebirth. This refers to a process whereby beings go through a succession of lifetimes as one of many possible forms of sentient life, each running from conception to death. In Buddhist thought, however, this rebirth does not involve any soul, unlike Hinduism and Jainism. According to Buddhism the atman concept is incorrect, untrue.
Reception
B. R. Ambedkar, the Dalit leader who in 1935 declared his intention to convert from Hinduism to Buddhism and converted about 20 years later, rejected that Buddha was an incarnation of Vishnu. Among the 22 vows he gave to the Dalit Buddhist movement, the 5th vow is "I do not and shall not believe that Lord Buddha was the incarnation of Vishnu. I believe this to be sheer madness and false propaganda."
According to Donald Swearer, the understanding of Buddha in Hinduism is a part of his wider and diverse influences. Even within Buddhism, states Swearer, Buddha and his ideas are conceptualized differently between Theravada, Mahayana, Tibetan, Japanese and other traditions. Similarly, in various traditions of Hinduism (and elsewhere), Buddha is accepted and interpreted in different ways.
Narada Maha Thera, a Buddhist monk and translator born in Sri Lanka states that Buddha was not an incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu, nor a Savior. He remarks that the Buddha taught his disciples to be dependent on themselves for their liberation and not on any external deity who could liberate or save them from the result of their evil deeds because according to Buddha purification and defilement depend on oneself. He expresses that Buddha clearly taught his disciples that Buddha is only a teacher and it is us who ultimately will have to walk on the path of liberation.
See also
- Sanghyang Adi Buddha
- Brahman
- Buddhism and Hinduism
- God in Buddhism
- Indian religions
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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