The Buddhist "monastery" and the Indian garden: aesthetics, assimilations, and the siting of monastic establishments.

• Author: Schopen, Gregory
• Position: Essay

--Fur Oskar von Hiniiber als kleines Zeichen eines grossen Dankes--

The vocabulary we use to refer to early Buddhist establishments in India could hardly be more different from the vocabulary that early Buddhist authors or compilers used to refer to the same places, (1) nor could two lexicons be farther apart in their associations. We call such places "monasteries" or "cloisters" and--willingly or not--invoke a vision of an isolated, chaste, serene, ascetic, and austere space. (2) Buddhist monks, however, in both texts and inscriptions called such places viharas or aramas, and these Sanskrit terms, or their Prakrit equivalents, would have had very different associations. In Classical Sanskrit the term vihara would have meant, and continued to mean, "walking or touring for pleasure"--this is the only sense in which Asoka uses the term (3)--or "sport, play, pastime, or diversion," or "a "place of recreation, pleasure-ground." Arama too would have referred to "delight, pleasure " or a "place of pleasure, a garden," (4) and for and urban population of any standing or sophistication in classical India both terms would have been associated with gardens lush with flowers and fruit trees in bloom, filled with bird-song and the cries of peacocks and the sound of bees, all invoking a strong aesthetic eroticism--an arama or vihara or udyana was where well-heeled men went to dally with lovely ladies, or where urban ladies went to amuse themselves and take in the scenery. Scenes of such occur repeatedly in Classical Sanskrit drama and "court" poetry where the garden and its beauties are constantly extolled and intertwined with aesthetic and erotic pleasure. (5)

At first sight, of course, the vocabulary of our Buddhist monks is at least a little startling, but their use of the language of the Indian garden is not limited to the terms vihara or arama. A number of Buddhist inscriptions, for example, refer to mandapas as components or constructions at monastic sites, (6) and although this term is usually translated as a "hall" or "pillared hall," Daud Ali--in the first serious discussion of gardens in early India--has noted that

By far, the most prominent architectural structures in gardens were bowers (mandapa nikuhja). which could either take the form of a clump of trees which formed a sort of enclosure, or just as typically, were fashioned by arranging vines and other creeping plants around the structure of a roofed pavilion (mandapa. (7) He also notes that the function of these "bowers" or mandapas was to provide shade, but that they were also "places of shelter and rest from the games and pursuits of the garden ... places of seclusion--places where lovers could conduct their amorous liaisons in secrecy" (p. 232). The presence of "architectural structures" and Ali's remarks, moreover, should suggest what both Buddhist and non-Buddhist literary sources make clear: the early Indian garden, while full of flowers, flowering and fruit trees, and flocks of all sorts of birds, was not a natural space, but a constructed and cultivated one, one that was carefully tended by gardeners, and such gardeners were commonly called--in both Buddhist and non--Buddhist literary sources--aramikas. But aramika is yet another term from the lexicon of the garden that is shared with Buddhist monastic sources: Buddhist monastic codes regularly call a category of lay menial workers who do the manual labor of the "monas tery" are, then, called the same thing in classical India.

Whether it will ever be possible to establish a clear chronological priority between the lexicon of the garden and the Buddhist monastic lexicon remains doubtful and, in any case, to be seen, and even if it could be done the more important thing is that there is no doubt at all that both lexicons were being deployed and were simultaneously circulating in the early centuries of the Common Era, and that is the period of interest here. This is clear, for example, from two plays attributed to Sudraka--whatever their precise dates (9)-which reflect both a fully developed conception of the Indian garden and its aesthetic and erotic associations, together with a sophisticated knowledge of Buddhist monastic practice and its literature. In Act VIII of the Mrcchakatika, for example, the Buddhist bhiksu who revives the unconscious heroine tells her to stand up by holding onto a creeper--he does not himself touch her and thus avoids violating the Vinaya rule; he also uses the term vihara and the technical term dharmabhagini ('sister-in-religion') to refer to a nun (Vs. 46+); in Act II--if van Buitenen is right--there is even a clever spoof of the well-known incident in the Buddha's biography where he pacifies a rampaging elephant. But in the Padmaprabhrtika there is an actual instance of the two lexicons--the monastic and the erotic--being deployed simultaneously in a clever double-entendre. Here a Buddhist monk is seen hurrying out of a whorehouse. When accosted, however, he says that he is just coming from the "monastery" (vihara), which of course, he is, since he is coming from his "play" or "pleasure ground" (vihara). His accoster, then, all but makes the double meaning explicit when he retorts: "Indeed, I know the real meaning of your vihara." (10) The indications coming from the other side are even more explicit.

If we take the Mulasarvastivada-vinaya as an example--and it will be our primary focus here--there can also be no doubt that the Buddhist monks who compiled it in north India in the early centuries of the Common Era were fully aware of what Ali calls "the institution of the garden" and its cultural values in all their layered complexity. There can also be very little doubt that in compiling their texts these Buddhist monks--as we will see--attempted to assimilate their establishments to the garden, or actually saw them as belonging to that cultural category. In any case, these Buddhist monks had a detailed knowledge of the Indian garden.

Ali says, "Indeed, it seems that the first widespread appearance of specifically designated 'gardens' in early Indian sources coincided with the rise of cities and the growth of urban life." He also notes that "the institution of the garden" emerged with the growth of cities. (11) But that the Indian garden was an urban phenomenon and an urban value had, in effect, already been noted long before in the Mulasarvastivada-vinaya. As a lead-in to one of its many narratives set in a garden, the compilers of this monastic code inserted one of their typical editorial or explanatory comments that are meant to account for some element of the action to follow, and frequently constitute cultural truisms. This one said--anticipating Ali--nagaramanusyah udyanapriyah "men of the cities love gardens." (12)

Ali notes further that "The overall descriptions of gardens in the early Indian sources ... suggest that they were not perceived as 'wild,' 'untamed' or 'pristine' nature, but instead, carefully constructed and highly supplemented places" (p. 223); that the character of gardens was "artificial"; that they were "places which required great material expenditure and laborious care" (p. 225); and were "highly manipulated and ornamented spaces ... furnished with various forms of decoration--paintings, hangings, silken cloths and jewels" (p. 233). According to Sudraka's Mrcchakatika the owner of a garden had to go every day to look after it to ensure that it was properly drained, cleaned, thriving, and manicured (tatra ca preksitum anudivasam suskam karayitum sodhayitum pustam karayitum lunamkarayitum gacchami). (13) Again the monks who compiled the Mulasarvastivada-vinaya were fully aware of all this, and not infrequently refer in some detail to the "supplemented," "artificial," "manipulated and ornamented" character of the garden. Its Ksudrakavastu, for example, describes what went into preparing the gardens of Sravasti by saying that officials had them

... cleaned, and having had the stones, and gravel, and pebbles swept up, they had them removed. Sprinkled with sandal water, hung with pots of sweet scented incense, arranged all around, with streamers and banners strung out, strings of tassels suspended, strewn with various kinds of flowers, captivating--they were like a pleasure grove and garden of the gods. (14). Although such descriptions of the Indian garden are so common in this monastic code that they could be called stencilled, like all such stencilled passages they do not always occur in exactly the same form: sometimes elements are deleted, and sometimes new ones are added. In the Civaravastu, for example, it is said that the garden is prepared not only by removing stones and gravel, aspersing it with scented water, and festooning it with cloth streamers, but also by filling it with the sounds of all sorts of singing and music (anekagi-tavaditraninddita). (15) Such spaces, it is important to note, were not just "highly supplemented places"; they were also spaces where--according to these Buddhist sources--the more gritty or less aesthetically pleasing aspects of nature were intentionally elided.

The Buddhist monks who redacted or compiled the Mulasarvastivada-vinaya were, finally, also fully aware that "more than anything, the garden was associated with love and lovers," with "erotic dalliance"--it formed, in fact, as Ali noted (p. 237)-"the ideal setting for the illicit or quasi-licit romances which formed the subject of numerous plays and poems in Sanskrit literature." As in this literature the Buddhist monks associated the garden with spring, and "spring was the season most associated with erotic pleasures (Ali, "Gardens," 235). In the passage from the Civaravastu already mentioned--to cite but one example--when its owner goes to the garden with his women, his activity is expressed with three verbs: kridatii, ramati, and paricarayati; he plays or frolics, amuses himself, and makes love. This is a stencilled string of verbs...