Chapter 1zzx _Section a-Ajanta Caves BORChapter1-7187 page 1 of 4 1228 words
Religion’s Biology: Communicational States and Human Traditions 7/18/2007 7:36:15 AM

Chapter 1. Prelude: The Many Names, Spandrels

“Angels, demons, spirits, wizards, gods and witches have peppered folk religions since mankind first started telling stories. Charles Darwin noted this….”
Robin Marantz Henig, Darwin’s God, N.Y. Times Magazine, Mar 4, 2007, p. 39.

“In a country with natural wonders such as Uluru, where every major topographic feature was endowed with mythological significance, it was not part of Aboriginal culture to build monuments such as megalithic tombs or pyramids.”
Josephine Flood: Archeology of The Dreamtime, Yale U Press, 1983, p.251

Ajanta Caves

How can we describe religion in a way that we can agree on, so that we can then discuss its biology, its origins in a person’s body? Anyone knows the meaning of that noun, and we could wander to the dictionary or the internet’s Wikipedia to see what they say.[1] But with any formal definition, personal experience and belief systems and those of one’s family, friends and community will make for great differences in what it truly means and a common ground recedes. Regardless of how the brain works logically, we feel and evaluate any definition according to whether we engage in devout rituals performed regularly, or to less formal spiritual feelings during meditation to avid work for “Freedom From Religion” movements to regular or occasional church attendance mostly for the community of other people who also participate (who feel like family, all members doing something in common, regardless of particular beliefs). I know my own background shaped my approach, so I provide some of my own development and family views in Chapter 3.

But for the moment, to sidestep whatever one brings to the conversation, let us begin as natural historians, as observers attentive to history, and look to places with known religious significance. We’ll start with the Ajanta Caves of India abandoned for many centuries, though now they possess tourist importance (and travel next to elsewhere in India, Australia and Italy). I know of course that billions of large and small buildings and natural sites possess religious significance by people over many millennia all over the world.

Human religious needs originated the significance of places of worship and celebration of religious beliefs. I see needs as “biological. To satisfy such needs, people give and receive need-related messages that involve cells, molecules, personal actions and reactions, and community-related behaviors. Such sometimes leave traces that last for many years, sometimes past their period of usefulness such as Bellini’s Restaurant near Capital Square in Madison, Wisconsin (I just passed it coming here); the restaurant’s charm stems in part from its having been built a church, accompanied by some sadness at the passing of that community. And such as the Ajanta caves of India, discovered by a British soldier wandering the countryside who in 1819 wandered a byway and found them for the modern world, after previous worlds had forgotten, leaving no seeming trace in history nor tradition.

Buddhist carvers made the thirty caves in a wall of a horseshoe bend of the Waghara River in two phases, one period about the time of Christ, beginning two centuries before him and ending in the first century A.D., then recommencing in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. Large numbers of people spent generations accomplishing the carvings as well as paintings still visible on the walls. We especially see statues of Sumedha, who became the enlightened one, the Buddha, in his characteristic poses in the paintings, pillars and bas relief carvings that compel the viewer’s attention, partly because they seem typical, part of modern experience here, as where I write now in Madison. Signaling the power of tradition we see at Ajanta that this goes back two millennia. Figures of the Buddha we see there vary little from these early examples undisturbed for centuries (though some others have been destroyed by forces such as the Taliban rulers in Afghanistan of recent decades, who destroyed giant Buddha statues for their own religious reasons). By contrast, as I review what I caught through my camera at Ajanta, I see many respectful curious visitors, some sari-clad, western-clad, some men wearing Nehru hats.

We read on Ajanta information boards that the caves functioned as places of worship, prayer halls and monastery quarters. Two and a half centuries before our common era, before Christ lived, the Indian emperor, Asoka, spread the idea of Buddhism widely throughout south and southeast Asia, establishing monasteries over widespread regions and sending missionaries to other Asian countries. Southeast Asia, China and Japan presently exhibit Buddha’s statues, some of immense size, carefully attended, respectfully remembered and religiously used. Buddha’s values may live on in other ways. Holger Kersten, religious historian from Freiburg, Germany, suggests in a book entitled, Jesus Lived in India, that Jesus’ values echoed Buddhist ones, and that in fact evidence exists that shows him found by those searching for a next Dalai Lama in a bright two year old (the famous wise men in another guise following astrological signs, hence going far to the west and finding “Issa” then training him for his appearance at the moneychangers. Gaps in his life from Biblical sources gain explanation from religious training well east of Jerusalem. Kersten found Issa’s grave in Kashmir and suggests it likely Jesus lived until past 80 years in age, having survived the crucifixion, though he retained scars from the ordeal.

The Buddha did not claim god-status but centuries later seemed to be one for many people in any event. Indeed, at some point our guide tells us that Hinduism co-opted Buddha by subsuming him in the Pantheon of the many Hindu gods so that the religious movement lost its momentum in the country of its origin. Perhaps this reflects truth; certainly we know conquerors to foster their own religions at the expense of the “obviously incorrect” ones of those conquered. But respectful attention may nevertheless ensue, with good tourist dollars resulting. For example, Ajanta now a World Heritage site just north of Aurangabad in western India, has hosted millions of travelers, we amongst them in 2004. Note that this short description mentions Buddhism, Hinduism, the Taliban form of Islam, and Christianity. Through mention of Aurangabad, we see additional reference to Islam, as Aurangzeb, an ardent Muslim who gave his name to the city, had reigned as the last really prominent Moghul, one of three competing sons of Shah Jahan, the one who won out.

We turn to Fatehpur Sikri’s story now, determined by Shah Jahan’s grandfather, but I pause to review the discussion so far.

1. Religions exhibit histories of widespread movements leaving physical, historical traces in the form of explicit and implicit histories, stories of tradition, some conjectural, some documented, some unchanging, some hotly debated (Kersten’s suggestion of Jesus as in the Buddhist tradition, for instance, has not much permeated Christian thinking).

2. The nature of deities varies with region, religion and also era. Where Buddhism once reigned leaving traces in stone next to the Waghara River, Hinduism now rules instead, along with Islam.

3. Human politics and economics affect religious practices. Think on the generations of stone carvers and painters who earned their livelihoods in those caves, supported and employed by religious figures or other funding entities such as a local royalty with Buddhist sympathies.

4. Religions exhibit human territorial features; how clever to have co-opted Buddha as a Hindu god in fostering conversions to the new way of thinking and feeling!


[1] Wikipedia: A religion is a set of beliefs and practices generally held by a community, involving adherence to codified beliefs and rituals and study of ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and mystic experience. The term "religion" refers to both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction.