Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment Julia Shaw The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Practice Edited by Kevin Trainor and Paula Arai Print Publication Date: Jul 2022 Subject: Religion, Buddhism Online Publication Date: May 2022 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190632922.013.10 Abstract and Keywords This chapter explores archaeology’s contribution to scholarly understandings of Buddhist attitudes toward the “natural” environment and the relevance of such material for global discourse on the contemporary climate-change and biodiversity crises. It draws on evi­ dence from central India for monastic engagement with food production, land and water use in lowland zones, as well as attitudes toward, and engagement with, upland forested areas, including the monastic occupation of prehistoric rock-shelters clustered around hilltops that were developed into architectural monastery complexes during the late cen­ turies BCE. Both sets of evidence need to be viewed together in order to address critical­ ly text-based discourse on Buddhist environmental ethics with its predominant focus on Buddhist attitudes toward the suffering of animals and the “beauty” of “nature,” over and above human-centric variables, and to reassess art-historical discourse on monastic gar­ dens as arenas for transcending and viewing “nature” from a distance. Such an approach also helps to break down socially constructed polarizations between “peripheral” forests and “productive” lowland agriculture that have long since shaped discourse on India’s re­ ligious, political, and environmental history. Keywords: Anthropocene, Ayurveda, Buddhism and nature, environmental humanities, garden studies, lowland-up­ land interactions, monastic governmentality, religion and ecology, rock-shelters and caves, translocal deity Introduction THIS chapter explores archaeology’s contribution to scholarly understandings of early In­ dian Buddhist attitudes toward the “natural” environment and the relevance of such ma­ terial for global discourse on the contemporary climate-change and biodiversity crises. There are two main foci of inquiry: (1) monastic engagement with food production, land and water use in lowland agricultural zones, and (2) attitudes toward, and engagement with, upland forests, including the monastic occupation of prehistoric rock-shelters clus­ tered around hilltops that were developed into structural monastery complexes during the late centuries BCE. Discourse on the related transition from peripatetic mendicancy to sedentary monasticism has tended to focus more on economic linkages with urbanPage 1 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022 Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment based and agricultural society than with upland forests that are often cast as dangerous places, removed from mainstream economic agency. I argue that both zones need to be viewed together if we are to understand the socio-ecological variables of the transmission of Buddhist monasticism, and the Buddhist literary and artistic motifs of “nature” in “monastic gardens” which are commonly presented as arenas for transcending and view­ ing “nature.” from a distance. I also explore discourse on the often-paradoxical position that forests and mountainous caves occupy in the Buddhist worldview—at once places of refuge and quiet meditation, sources of mystery and hidden treasures including jewels and medico-culinary plants, but also locales of danger and fear. Archaeological correlates of such views include scholarship on timber and non-timber forest products (NTFP) in South Asian and trans-national trading networks, and diachronic landscape archaeology data that illuminate the long-term entanglements between monastics and both upland and lowland environments that supported the development of institutionalized monasti­ cism. The main case study here is the Sanchi Survey Project (SSP) in central India, which involved the documentation of diachronic landscape data including hilltop monastery complexes, “natural” caves (guha) and adapted rock-shelters (lena), habita­ tional settlements, sculptures, temples, water resource structures, and land-use patterns. Together with comparative case studies from other parts of South Asia,1 the evidence for the sangha’s engagement with different types of socio-ecological environments in the Sanchi area provides an empirical basis for reassessing scholarly views on the “ecologi­ cal” credentials of early Buddhism,2 and their relevance for global discourse on the poten­ tial for past human-environmental interactions and “worldviews” to shape current and fu­ ture sustainability policy.3 (p. 214) Archaeology, Religion-and-Ecology, and the En­ vironmental Humanities Discourse on Buddhist attitudes toward “nature” is characterized by a general lack of in­ tegration between Buddhist studies and archaeology, which has been slow to engage with religion-and-ecology discourse4 and the environmental humanities more broadly speak­ ing.5 Despite archaeology’s long-standing interest in human-environment interactions, it has tended to focus on technological rather than cultural drivers of and responses to envi­ ronmental change.6 Hence, idealized assumptions regarding the “eco” credentials of ear­ ly Indian religions have until recently seen little challenge from archaeology.7 Nevertheless, archaeology holds much potential for redressing such views, particularly the notion of pre-colonial India’s untouched, and universally revered, upland forests rep­ resenting the natural “other” of their “cultural” agro-urban lowland counterparts.8 In Southeast Asia, for example, upland zones previously designated as “virgin” forests are now known to have undergone extensive urban development in antiquity, and in India woodland managing practices were central to Neolithic investment agriculture.9 Page 2 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022 Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment However, such recognition of the economic value of forests should not undermine the rit­ ually charged associations of such places.10 Similar dislocations characterize archaeology’s engagement with Anthropocene and cli­ mate change studies, which have been more aligned with the environmental sciences than with the humanities. Studies on the posited links between the weakening of the sum­ mer monsoon in 4.1 Ky BP/2100 BCE, the transformation of Harappan urbanism in ca. 1900 BCE, and later changes in land use and food production11 generally overlook possi­ ble intersections with cultural, religio-philosophical, or medical correlates of such processes. Similarly, explanations for the “second” urbanization of the mid-first-millenni­ um-BCE Gangetic valley have emphasized metallurgical innovation as a driver of agricul­ tural expansion into previously inaccessible, forested areas. The archaeological testing of less technologically deterministic models, especially as (p. 215) urban-based polities and religious traditions spread westward from the third century BCE, has been further ham­ pered by the mono-site-type focus of most pre-1990s settlement surveys, and archaeobotany’s traditional focus on the earlier, Neolithic origins of crop agriculture.12 Buddhist “Landscapes” and Monastic Gardens Unsurprisingly, therefore, archaeology has had little impact on discourse regarding Bud­ dhist attitudes toward “nature,” which may be divided into two main camps: (1) the “ecoapologists,” who emphasize the “eco-dharmic” content of early Buddhist teachings,13 and (2) the “eco-critics,” who argue that such claims have been distorted and misappropriat­ ed by Western environmentalism.14 The former emphasize Buddhist preoccupations with nonviolence (ahiṃsā) and the alleviation of suffering (dukkha) of animals, an expectation of care toward the “natural” world, together with ideals of universal compassion as em­ bodied in later, Mahayana traditions of Avalokiteshvara. Further, Arne Næss’s “Deep Ecology” reputedly drew explicitly upon the largely Chinese interpretations of the doc­ trine of pratītyasamutpāda.15 However, these posited direct linkages between Buddhist teachings and modern environmentalist movements are generally dismissed by the ecocritics as anachronistic and historically inaccurate.16 Schmithausen, for example, argues that early monastics were impressed less by the “beauty” of “nature” than by its negative and “dangerous” aspects; and that they followed a form of “passive environmentalism” that sought not to transform or “subjugate nature but to transcend it spiritually through detachment.”17 Schmithausen’s emphasis on detachment from and transcendence of “nature” is echoed by art-historical discourse on monastery gardens as ascetic inversions of courtly urban ideals,18 whereby plant imagery depicted in late-centuries-BCE stupa-railing art repre­ sents not “real” plants, but rather idealized utopias, or “dharma spaces,” that signal monks’ transcendence of, rather than engagement with, “nature.”19 Accordingly, yakṣī sculptures are recast as courtesans acting only mnemonically as symbols of monastics’ transcendence of worldly pleasures,20 while Schopen views gardens as places that al­ Page 3 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022 Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment lowed monastics to enjoy the “views” of the surrounding bucolic countryside from a “safe distance.”21 A very different view, however, is painted by the SSP multi-type-site landscape data—in­ cluding 35 hilltop monastery sites and 145 habitational settlements over an area of 750 square kilometers (Figure 12.1)—the suggestion being that by the second century BCE, most hilltops had already been built over by extensive monastic complexes. They over­ looked highly cultivated, hydraulically engineered, agrarian landscapes, interspersed by fairly densely distributed, habitational sites.22 A key feature of such landscapes was a net­ work of reservoirs built in the third to second century BCE, arguably to provide both up­ stream and downstream irrigation in response to growing monastic (p. 216) populations and the need for more sustainable exchange networks than were possible through tradi­ tional mendicancy.23 This evidence attests to monastic communities that, far from being removed from “na­ ture,” excelled in the control and harnessing of its resources. Moreover, the aforemen­ tioned monastic gardens and related plant and animal representations symbolized the sangha’s direct and skilful engagement with, rather than transcendence of economically productive “natural” environments. Figure 12.1. Map of landscape and archaeological data from the Sanchi Survey Project. Photo: Julia Shaw. That the monastery had vested interests in lowland agrarian environments is supported by textual and epigraphical evidence in Sri Lanka, where monastic landlordism was a key instrument of lay patronage from the second century BCE.24 Recent survey and excava­ tion work presents the idea of “theocratic” hydraulic landscapes in Anuradhapura’s hin­ terland, with comparative studies in eastern India, Bihar, and the Northwest.25 Similarities between the relative configuration of monasteries, villages, and reservoirs in Sri Lanka and central India justify the assumption of a comparable three-way exchange system between landowners, monasteries, and the agricultural laity in both regions. Wa­ Page 4 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022 Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment ter control also plays a key role within monastic gardens themselves, as illustrated by os­ tentatiously displayed water-harvesting and storage facilities at rock-cut monasteries in Gujarat and the western Deccan that evidently doubled as (p. 217) outward displays of the sangha’s ability to tame and harness natural resources in regions of climatic uncertainty.26 While local populations previously depended on rainmaking cults for con­ trolling the onset of the monsoon rains, they were now assured timely water supplies via new technologies. Water shortage is a primary cause of dukkha, especially in regions where ninety percent of annual rainfall occurs in two to three months, and the sangha’s ability to alleviate such suffering was made explicit through ornamental water features that dominate the landscaped monastic “gardens” of places such as Kanheri and Juna­ gadh. In my view, the eco-dharma debate, with its predominant focus on the non-injury of ani­ mals, has been hampered by its lack of engagement with the evidence for an environmen­ tally engaged sangha that reflects deeply rooted concerns with human suffering (dukkha), its causes, and means of alleviation. Further, intersections between Buddhist environmen­ tal worldviews, and medical, ritual, and bio-ecological constructions of human and envi­ ronmental “care,” health, and well-being27 are relevant for scholarly and activist-oriented enquiries into Buddhist “environmentalism,” especially given recognition within ecologi­ cal public health discourse of the behavioral and religo-cultural correlates of planetary and human health.28 Monasteries, Reservoirs, Lowland Rice Agricul­ ture, and Rainmaking Cults: “Local” and “Translocal” Landscapes and Representations The Buddhist monuments at Sanchi overlook a hydraulic landscape that fits with the so­ cially engaged model of “Buddhist economics” that sustained “non-producing” monks and provided a practical means for alleviating human dukkha.29 A key argument is that the ir­ rigation reservoirs here supported rice rather than wheat cultivation, the latter being cul­ tivatable efficiently in the local clay-rich soils without irrigation.30 By contrast, the agrari­ an base of the Gangetic valley which supported the “second urbanization” and the earli­ est Buddhist communities of the mid-first millennium BCE had been rooted in rice cultiva­ tion from at least 2000 BCE,31with paddy fields figuring prominently in texts as back­ drops to Buddhist narratives or as metaphors for monastic discipline. The as-yet untested hypothesis is that the westward spread of rice from this area accompanied the transmis­ sion of both Buddhism and urban polities; extant archaeobotanical samples from South India and the Deccan paint a confusing picture, with dates ranging from the late cen­ turies BCE to the mid-first millennium CE. However, it is important to stress that sam­ pling locations seem to have been chosen without due regard to discourse on monastic governmentality and the socio-ecological realities depicted therein. Moreover, despite re­ cent cautions against inferring irrigation facilities from evidence for rice,32 the (p. 218) ob­ verse situation prevails at Sanchi, where there is irrigation but only a hypothetical pres­ Page 5 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022 Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment ence of rice. However, the high levels of manpower, financial investment, and stored wa­ ter provisions indicated by the archaeo-hydrological evidence at Sanchi make it difficult to envisage any associated crop other than rice.33 Further, pollen sequences from the reservoir deposits attest to a predominance of marsh­ land plant species associated with water-logged, upstream rice-cropping environments. The fact that aquatic species—lotus plants, fish, turtles, and snakes—also dominate Sanchi’s railing art reinforces my earlier suggestion that such “garden” imagery symbol­ izes not the sangha’s transcendence of “nature,” as suggested by others, but rather its di­ rect engagement with the care and management of the kinds of hydraulic environments attested by the SSP landscape data. Such imagery may also reflect “transportable” land­ scape ideals from the paddy-dominated environments of the Gangetic valley Buddhist “heartland,” in similar ways as “translocal” deities from that region, as discussed later, accompanied the spread of Buddhism to new areas. Sanchi’s stupas and their “watery” setting also conform with deeper Indic cosmogonic models such as Mount Meru rising from primordial waters, a common motif at sacred sites across South and Southeast Asia. Brancaccio argues that a similar superimposition of “transportable” Buddhist geogra­ phies characterized the transmission of Buddhism to the western Deccan, where the nat­ ural mountainous terrain of places such as Ajanta, Ellora, and Elephants was re-land­ scaped according to textual ideals of “palatial abodes in mythical paradises”; the result­ ing natural-cultural canvas is arguably as crucial to the “reading” of such sites as the rock-cut temples and monasteries themselves.34 Of key relevance here are yakṣas and yakṣīs, which belong to a class of deity often de­ scribed as “local” and susceptible to assimilation by “Pan Indian”—Buddhist or Sanskritic —worldviews, and described in early Pali texts as “dangerous” spirits of specific places that can distract forest monks from their meditational duties; like nāgas, they require hu­ man propitiation to afford protection from the dangerous natural forces—rainfall, pesti­ lence, and disease—that they control.35 However, most such stories are set in the Gangetic valley, and distinguishing between their “translocal” and actual “local” status in other areas is rarely straightforward. Cohen makes a distinction here between Ajanta’s Cave-16-nāga shrine that he argues helped to “localize” the sangha by honoring “local” rainmaking cults, and Hārītī, the child-eating “demoness” from Rajgir in the Gangetic val­ ley, who acts rather as a “portable local deity,” symbolizing only in a generalized and “et­ ic” sense the “local” convert.36 However, although the spatial correlation between nāga shrines and water-bodies in the Sanchi area accords with nāgas’ reputed control over the monsoon rains, because they postdate the establishment of Buddhism here by several hundred years, I argue that many such nāgas should, like Hārītī, be seen as components of a “transportable” Buddhist landscape, rather than as indicators of preexisting “local” ritual-ecological realities.37 How do we get at the latter then, particularly those connected with upland, forest zones, or with devolved, dissenting, or “non-governed” entities with which the latter are often linked.38 While state-level expansion into forested areas, including the assimilation of re­ gional cults, the settlement of Brahmins, and the establishment of temples, (p. 219) is cen­ Page 6 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022 Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment tral to “processural” models of “early-medieval” state development in the Deccan and South India, earlier upland-lowland interactions of this kind remain poorly tested archae­ ologically,39 while discourse on the international “spice-trade” has neglected NTFP-urbanrural trading networks within India itself.40 Other obstacles include Wittfogelian con­ structions of the highly centralized state-level control of land and water resources.41 However, although inscriptions attest to the state-funded construction of many “Big Dams,”42 their day-to-day governance was often overseen by village councils and reli­ gious institutions, including, from the mid-first millennium CE, Hindu temples and landowning deities.43 Further, although discourse on early Buddhist patronage stresses the role of urban traders and merchants, the relationship between Buddhism and productive society is in fact ambiguous. The sangha’s “middle-way” approach to asceticism and agro-urban cul­ ture is often contrasted with the more extreme “anti-civilizational” stance of some Hindu ascetic groups, including the rejection of hiṃsic cereal-based agriculture in favor of small-scale horticulture.44 However, Benavides regards Buddhist monasticism as neither a rejection nor affirmation of urban society, but rather a “commentary” on new attitudes toward labor, consumption, wealth and purity, and pollution: while monks are prohibited from engaging in labor, the lay donations (dāna) on which they depend comes from oth­ ers’ polluting work. Through a reworking of Hindu purification rites, the donor is cleansed of such pollution through gift-giving rituals that also disguise the sangha’s di­ rect involvement in economic exchange, and thus make institutionalized monasticism pos­ sible. This system is reflected in late-centuries-BCE donative inscriptions recording forms of collective patronage that fueled the “second propagation” of Buddhism in central India.45 However, those epigraphs recording single-identity grants of land, villages, and labor don’t appear until the early to mid-first millennium CE46 and, according to Schopen, these set the bar for dating the transition to fully sedentary monasticism.47 However, I have ar­ gued that Schopen’s scheme overlooks crucial evidence for late-centuries-BCE rock-cut monastery architecture in the Deccan, and contemporary structural “platformed” monas­ teries, as well as associated forms of monastic-governmentality in central India.48 The lat­ ter evidence based on the SSP landscape data, attesting as it does for the sangha’s en­ gagement with agriculture, is of crucial relevance also for discourse on “Buddhist envi­ ronmentalism,” and yet has remained absent from text-based discussions to date, with the exception of Elverskog, who cites the SSP landscape data as case studies for contesting the eco-dharma thesis.49 Although Elverskog cites related “anti-environmentalist” activi­ ties, including the destruction of forests to make way for monasteries, the implication that agriculture, by itself, is inherently incompatible with an “environmentally friendly” sangha is problematic. Crucially, it ignores broader discourse on “sustainable” agricultur­ al practices, and community-based responses to socio-ecological challenges of which, I have argued, early forms of monastic governmentality are key examples; Elverskog’s po­ sition also reinforces problematic canonical models of forest monasticism as the “origi­ Page 7 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022 Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment nal” ascetic path, set above “later” and “degenerate” forms of socially engaged monasti­ cism.50 Forests, Rock-Shelters, and Hilltop Monas­ teries: Human, Nonhuman, and “More-thanHuman” Entanglements (p. 220) Although lowland agricultural zones were central to the development of monastic-lay ex­ change in the Sanchi area, the earliest monasteries were established only after periods of pre-monumental engagement with forested upland environments. My argument is that these regions and the medico-culinary resources that they support are crucial for under­ standing the environmental correlates of socially engaged monasticism, especially given the prominence of the forest motif in Buddhist art and literature, and theories regarding the influence of Buddhism on the spread of Ayurvedic materia medica.51 Particularly instructive here is Falk’s study of royal forest rituals at yakṣa “thrones” in sa­ cred groves (ārāma) demarcated from larger expanses of wild “forest” (jāṅgala),52 and Trautmann’s argument that elephants, as symbols of both the “wilderness” and imperial power, illustrated the synchronicity of urban and forest economies. Moreover, since ele­ phants were captured in the wild before being trained, rulers were compelled to engage themselves in forest conservation.53 Against such arguments it is fitting that the ele­ phant, as a symbol in equal measure of the “wild” as well as urban sensibilities, figures so prominently in early stupa railing art, given the sangha’s similarly dialectic relationship to both urban and forest lifeways. The majority of monasteries in the Sanchi area occur on hilltops which, with the excep­ tion of the five Archaeological Survey of India protected “Bhilsa Topes” sites, are now covered with fairly dense forest vegetation, a striking indicator of major socio-ecological transformations following the decline of Buddhist monasticism in around the twelfth cen­ tury CE. Habitational settlement density in the intervening valleys and lower hillsides is also much lower today than attested to by historical patterns.54 The central Indian hills support valuable plant, animal, and mineral resources, including building materials, semiprecious stones, and iron ores,55 while the distribution of prehistoric rock-shelters throughout central India, with paintings and tool assemblages dating back in places such as Bhimbetka to the Mesolithic, attest to the deep-historical linkages between hills and hunter-gatherer lifeways. Hills are also closely associated with place-bound deities such as yakṣas that we dis­ cussed earlier. For example, the Āṭānāṭiya-sutta (Sutta 30) of the Dīghanikāya (III.194– 206), the great “protective text” that was popular for keeping problematic spirits away as Buddhism spread along the Silk Roads, describes yakṣas providing a protective chant to the Buddha dwelling on Vultures Peak in Rajgir.56 This text is really all about yakṣas. Some are described as “good” and as keeping the precepts, but many are not and, since they favor remote places like forests and mountains, can obstruct meditators. Similarly, Page 8 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022 Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment named yakṣa shrines (cetiya) connected with groves and (p. 221) trees57 feature promi­ nently in hilltop festivals (gir-agga-samajjan), some of which are mentioned in Aśoka’s edicts 1 and 9 as being prohibited for monks and nuns.58 The notion that the topography of Buddhist sites followed older cultic conventions has long since informed archaeological assumptions regarding the prevalence of pre-Buddhist ritual practices at early monastic sites,59 while the term cetiya, used in later Pali litera­ ture to refer to stupas, has been described as a “deliberate” Buddhist “conversion of ter­ minology.”60 Whether the sangha actively sought out such places due to their prior sacred status, however, is difficult to determine, especially since yakṣa or nāga worship rarely took on durable forms in these early periods; it is also possible that as a “non-producing” entity, the sangha was restricted to settling non-agricultural spaces that were, according to later texts such as the Arthaśāstra (verse 2.2.5), designated for use by peripatetic, “property-renouncing” ascetical and scholarly communities.61 Interesting insights into such questions, however, are provided by the SSP settlement pat­ terns: although there are increased settlement numbers in “interior” zones during the main phase of Buddhist construction (second–first centuries BCE), older sedentary vil­ lages from around 1000 BCE occur throughout the study area.62 Similarly, the occurrence of rock-shelters, many containing prehistoric paintings and microlithic tools, at fourteen of the hilltop monastic sites—including examples on the eastern edge of the northern sad­ dle of Sanchi hill, and Nagauri hill to the south63—attests to much older occupation of such places from at least the Chalcolithic period (2000 BCE). Similar correlations be­ tween prehistoric rock-shelters and Buddhist sites are noted in other parts of the Indian subcontinent.64 Such shelters may have been used by monastics as temporary residences before the con­ struction of permanent monasteries, or as retreats at the edges of subsequently monu­ mentalized complexes, in keeping with textual accounts of the special ritual or healing properties of “natural” caves (guha), to which we will return later.65 Many such caves, however, show direct evidence for adaptation into monastic dwellings. Although lacking the characteristic “drip ledges” of the third-century-BCE-inscribed lenas of Sri Lanka— rock-cut channels cut into their overhangs for diverting rainfall from the interior living spaces, and occurring also in many of the Deccan rock-cut caves66—many include simple additions such as external terraced platforms, interior “beds,” painted inscriptions and Buddhist imagery, or have small stupas built around their entrances or summits. Such places are thus closer to accepted definitions of modified cave dwellings (lena) than to more “isolated,” unadapted caves (guha), although, as discussed later, the term lena comes to be more closely associated with more extreme forms of adaptation, as typified by the Deccan rock-cut caves. At Sanchi itself, three “monastic rock-shelter” clusters were documented on the lower western and southern slope of the hill below the main stu­ pa complex; others have small stupas at their entrances or on their overhanging element, all features that mark them as “significant” locales.67 At Nagauri to the south, one of many painted shelters clustered around the hill contains prehistoric paintings superim­ posed by a later painted frieze of an enthroned “royal” couple seated before a procession Page 9 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022 Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment of horses and elephants with riders, and two yakṣa-type, spear-holding (p. 222) figures. The narrative style recalls the first-century-CE carved gateway panels at Sanchi, but Falk’s aforementioned work on royal forest rituals may also be relevant here.68 The richest collection of “monastic rock-shelters” in the study area occurs at Morel Khurd to the east, a large stupa and monastery complex that forms one of five sites connected to the Hemavata relics.69 Two such shelters stand immediately below a group of small stu­ pas on the southern part of the hill. Although lacking external platforms, one contains a painted śankhalipi inscription; the other contains a painted frieze of a cow, a horse, and a camel with riders, which, as at Nagauri, echo the narrative style of the Sanchi gateway panels.70 On the northeastern edge of the same hill is a larger group of ten shelters, sev­ en of which have two-meter-high stone platforms and dividing walls at their entrances, and some have raised sleeping areas inside. A large number of one- to two-meter-diame­ ter stupas are arranged over their summits and adjoining plateau, which features a line of sulfurous hot-air holes and outlines of stone structures within which the holes would have been enclosed. These may correspond with the “hot baths” (jantaghara) that comprise one of the ten structural components of a saṅgharama (Mahāvagga I, 30, 4; Cullavagga VI, 1, 2).71 There are large openings inside the shelters that appear to be linked via faultlines with the hot-air holes, and that may correspond with early Buddhist textual ac­ counts, discussed later, of mountain caves being converted into sweat (swedana) cham­ bers, possibly influenced by Ayurvedic therapies described in the Caraka Saṃhitā (Sū­ trasthāna 1, chapter 14). (Figure 12.2). Figure 12.2. Monastic rock-shelter at Morel Khurd. Photo: Julia Shaw. An example of a more solitary “monastic rock-shelter” occurs on the western edge of Sat­ dhara hill, another of the Hemavata relic-stupa sites, to the west of Sanchi. It contains several painted details, including a Buddha image, two stupas, and a sixth–seventh-centu­ ry-CE inscription of the Buddhist creed. Given the cave’s precarious cliff-side location, there (p. 223) is no room for an outer terrace, but its scenic position, set apart from the main stupas and monasteries, and overlooking the river Bes, is suggestive of a quiet med­ itational retreat.72 Page 10 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022 Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment To the north of Vidisha, at Ahmadpur, and forming part of a complex of fifty-eight prehis­ toric painted shelters is another single shelter containing a five-line painted Brahmi in­ scription datable to between the first century BCE and first century CE, in a highly local­ ized, and only partially decipherable, Prakrit.73 Other paintings include a “tree-in-railing” motif, and a yakṣa-type figure holding a spear, similar to the aforementioned example from Nagauri, and numerous śankhalipi inscriptions that may be contemporary with a Gupta-period stupa and temple complex on other parts of hill. One of the few decipher­ able parts of the inscription mentions “vanehi soḍas-ehi 10 6 ca” (“with sixteen [forests?]”) which, together with the absence of contemporary Buddhist architectural re­ mains, is suggestive of a solitary forest retreat (āvasā). Similar evidence occurs at other central Indian sites, such as Kharwai, Ghatla, and Bhim­ betka in Raisen District,74 the latter containing a single-line Brāhmī inscription that de­ scribes it as “Simhakasa lena” (“the cave-dwelling of Simhakasa”), and forming part of a complex of painted shelters dating back to the Mesolithic period. By contrast, a large group of “monastic rock-shelters” with external platforms and internal “beds” at the Aśokan edict site of Pangurariya (Hoshangabad District) forms, as at Morel-khurd, part of what is otherwise an extensive monastic complex.75 It is possible that some of these “monastic shelters” provided transitional accommodation for monastics before the perma­ nent hilltop monasteries had been completed, although this suggestion requires testing through excavation and palynological investigations. As in Sri Lankan and Southeast Asian two-tiered models of forest/urban monasticism, some such shelters were undoubt­ edly used also in later periods following the construction of structural monasteries. More­ over, they may have continued to hold special ritual significance in keeping with the medi­ tational, healing, and magical reputation accorded to such places in Buddhist texts. The evidence for this is strongest at Satdhara, while an eleventh-century-CE Mahayana cave retreat near Raisen, to the south of Sanchi, illustrates the continued importance of such places, even after the decline of sedentary monasticism.76 Of relevance here is Granoff’s study of textual references to remote mountain caves as places for medical therapeutic practice, either by virtue of their perceived inherent heal­ ing powers, or through their proximity to “alchemical jewels” and medicinal plants,77 and of Buddhaghosa’s recommendations of certain caves in Sri Lanka as places for medita­ tional retreat.78 In Mahayana texts of the second-to-third centuries CE, such caves fea­ ture as portals into magical “bejeweled” worlds79 and, in post-Gupta Tantric texts, as lo­ cales for esoteric spells and rituals.80 Granoff makes a clear-cut distinction between the isolated, “wild” guha and the sophisticated rock-cut lena of the western Deccan sites. However, such a setup overlooks more simply adapted caves such as the Sri Lankan lena, and the aforementioned central Indian “monastic rock-shelters,” both of which may fit somewhere between these two extremes. Moreover, Granoff’s emphasis on the purely “magical” and ritual attributes of such places perpetuates socially constructed notions of the economically disconnected forest, despite oblique reference to the “medicinal plants” to which such locations afforded access. The latter of course (p. 224) fit well with archaeo­ logical accounts of the importance of upland forests as sources of medico-culinary “spices,”81 while textual references to the “Jewel Mountains” in which caves are set may Page 11 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022 Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment reflect geological as much as “magical” or “ritual” realities; for example, the hill-ranges around Ajanta and other Deccan rock-cut sites are still important source areas for India’s precious and semi-precious stones industry. Further, the ambiguity surrounding the “wild” versus “cultivated” status of guhas/lenas in Buddhist art and literature may reflect changing social mores and anxieties about “na­ ture” as much as morphological reality. The oft-cited case study here is the Indasālagūha at Rajgir, which, according to the Sakka pañha sutta, is where the Buddha, surrounded by wild animals, provided teachings to Indra (Sakka). Artistic representations of this scene from Gandhara, or late first-century-BCE Bharhut, show the cave in its “natural” forest setting, but the later, first-century-CE depictions on Sanchi’s northern gateway frieze present it as a rock-cut caitya, of the type with which we are familiar from the Deccan sites.82 Rajgir’s mountainous terrain is shown, but in a “tamed and mannered” form that arguably mirrors structural shifts from temporary monsoon retreats to permanent monas­ teries or, as in the Deccan, the direct transformation of natural caves into artificially exca­ vated cave-like structures.83 By the fifth century CE, Buddhaghosa describes the In­ dasālagūha as having already been transformed from a guha into a rock-cut edifice (lena) during the Buddha’s lifetime, which Brancaccio argues may reflect contemporary anxi­ eties about an unadapted cave being used as the Buddha’s residence, or as a place of worship.84 Obviously if the “artificial” status of the Indasālagūha can be thus exaggerated to fit with changing social mores, the “wild” or “dangerous” element of such places was no doubt equally susceptible to exaggeration. For example, Granoff discusses a Mahāvas­ tu verse that recounts the adaptation of a remote Himalayan cave (guha) into a therapeu­ tic sweat-chamber inspired by Ayurvedic practices.85 However, the previously discussed “hot-air hole” at Morel Khurd that was evidently an integral part of the surrounding “monastic rock-shelter” complex there demonstrates that such practices were not always restricted to “remote” mountainous contexts divorced from socially engaged forms of monasticism. Another important point here is that most of the central Indian “monastic shelters” con­ tain Chalcolithic paintings of everyday forest scenes, unusual “deities,” and wild animals depicted in hunting, post-butchery, or hide-preparation scenes, often with their internal organs and skeletal structure visible.86 This rich repertoire holds much scope for broad­ ening scholarly understanding of interactions between Pan-Indian/Sanskritic and regional cults and related iconographies, as well as the possible impact of prehistoric hunting practices and related conventions of representation—and later Buddhist engagement with such material—on the development of anatomical medical knowledge, which has hitherto focused solely on the Classical Sanskrit tradition; this is of particular relevance given the attested influence of Buddhist monastics on the spread of Ayurveda.87 It is also interest­ ing to query whether later perceptions, including those of resident monastics, toward the content and meanings of these prehistoric paintings influenced Buddhist textual and artistic portrayals of the “magical” or “dangerous” properties of such places, even if some of the aspects of forest life that the paintings (p. 225) depicted were no longer realities. We may assume, however, that cave-dwelling monastics would have been as familiar with those enduring elements of forest-based culture, such as for example, tree coppicing and Page 12 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022 Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment swidden agricultural practices that go back to at least 2500 BCE. as they were with low­ land agriculture. Indeed, as today, there would have been considerable overlap between the two; forests continue to provide crucial grazing, foraging, and hunting opportunities for villagers, with products such as honey and medico-culinary plants and animals featur­ ing prominently in urban-rural trading networks. Future excavation is needed to test the degree to which non-ascetical occupation of such rock-shelters persisted during early-historic periods, but extant settlement data suggest that hilltops were not favored as places for village occupation during any period. Most settlements are represented by denuded mudbrick mounds on the plains, with around 27 percent of total settlements surviving as poorly dated stone structural remains on the lower slopes of hillsides.88 What is clear, however, is that through the construction of hilltop monastic complexes in the late centuries BCE, monastics would have come to represent the principal occupants of such zones. A notable feature here is that key monuments are sited on naturally forti­ fied cliffs, vulnerable points are reinforced with imposing boundary walls, and monaster­ ies follow towering, vertically oriented plans, raised on high platforms and approached by internally set entrances.89 Such provisions would have ensured protection against floods and potential threats from hostile humans, as well as wildlife, from tigers to insects.90 By contrast, the relatively exposed “monastic rock-shelters,” as well as the older monsoon rain retreats out of which sedentary monasticism grew, would have ensured that monas­ tics were fully familiar with such threats, and this too may have influenced later architec­ tural traditions. Instructive in this regard is the “Bhaya-bherava Sutta” (“Discourse on Fear and Dread”) of the Sutta Piṭaka, which describes the Buddha teaching forestdwelling ascetics meditation techniques for overcoming the fear of wild animals.91 Further, in the Commentary to the Dhammapada (verse 40), we have the story of the “Five Hundred Bhikkhus” fleeing from their forest encampment after being spooked by forest spirits (devatas) there.92 The latter hide in the trees but soon tire of their guests, conjuring up ghostly apparitions and illnesses to scare them off. The monks seek refuge with the Buddha, who advises them to return to the forest while chanting the MettāSutta. This brings about peace with the devatas, who descend from the trees, offering their service and devotion to the monks. While this humorous “psychodrama [ … ] cap­ tures the spirit of Buddhist meditation,”93 it also distills Buddhist attitudes toward the “wild” as at once beautiful, frightening, and unpredictable, while illustrating the in­ evitable disturbance to and control of “nature” that the movement of increasingly large monastic communities into forested environments would have entailed. The ambiguity surrounding the “human” versus “supranatural” status of the tree-dwellers in this story is also significant, and recalls previously discussed debates surrounding the courtesan/yakṣī identity of sculptures in early Buddhist art, whose precise relationship to the plants from which they emerge is not always obvious. Sculptured (p. 226) śālabañjikās (the “one that plucks śāla flowers”) on Sanchi’s first-century-CE Stupa 1 gateways, and from sites in the Deccan,94 belong to a genre of “women standing beneath trees,” or Page 13 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022 Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment plucking flowers as in the Shravasti festival of the Āvadana Jātaka.95 There are also older references in the Mahābhārata (Vanaparva III, 265, i-3a), to the puṣpa shākha dhāra (“flowering branch holder”), or the “force” that “bends down the branch of the kadama tree,” with names varying from devatā, yakṣī, dānavī, apsara, “a fair Daitya girl,” nāginī, to rakṣasī (“night wanderer in the wood”). Although some such “forces” are bound to specif­ ic trees, others have the power to move independently, as though it is the spirit of the tree rather than the tree itself that “wills and acts,”96 while canonical prohibitions against de­ stroying a sacred tree (cetiyarukkha) to make way for a monastery has been taken to sug­ gest a belief in the “soul” of the tree. Given the ambiguity surrounding the human, nonhu­ man, or “more-than-human” status of such beings, it is possible that the śālabañjikā embodied all three: the courtesan, the forest-dwelling human, and the “natural” or “supranatural” force of the tree. Moreover, the śālabañjikā’s anthropomorphized form im­ plies a “natural” world that has already come under the influence of human control and transformation, a process that is epitomized by the prominence of the garden motif, in general, and the śāla tree, more specifically, in Buddhist art, the latter playing such a cen­ tral role in woodland management practices such as coppicing and swidden from at least the Neolithic period.97 Also instructive here is the tale of Aṅgulimāla, who features prominently in early Bud­ dhist art and literature as the forest-dwelling bandit who is converted by the Buddha, but who comes to represent more generally the wilderness as a place of danger that must be “domesticated” by the sangha.98 Finally, the socio-ecological implications of the Vessan­ tara Jātaka and two of the other Jātakas that feature on Sanchi’s first-century-CE gateways, warrant further analysis in light of the broader landscape context provided by the SSP data, given that they are all set in forests and involve various kinds of exploita­ tion of natural/“wild” resources. Conclusion This chapter has explored the potential of archaeologically attested interactions between monastic groups, and the environments, communities, and products of both upland forest­ ed and lowland agricultural zones in central India, for interrogating textual and art-his­ torical positions on Buddhist attitudes toward “nature,” and for illuminating potential ecological motifs in early stories and narratives. An obvious irony is that the forests that provided refuge for ascetic groups seeking to distance themselves from productive soci­ ety were valuable sources of timber and medico-culinary products, but also of perceived social “danger” and contagion. Further, the financial viability of physically but not social­ ly removed monasticism depended on its economic interactions with surrounding vil­ lagers and townspeople, and in particular its direct involvement with lowland crop-based agriculture. Whether the latter, following Elverskog’s arguments, (p. 227) presents “proof” of the sangha’s “anti-environmentalist” stance depends on definitions of both “environ­ mentalism” and “sustainability.” However, monastic governmentality may be instructive for modern environmental activism, if only by offering examples of community, ideologybased, models of land and water “care,” while the rejuvenation of the pre-modern hy­ Page 14 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022 Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment draulic structures upon which such systems relied continues to inform localized solutions to the negative fallout of unsustainable agricultural practices introduced following the ironically named “green revolution” of the 1970s.99 Hopefully three further points have also been demonstrated: (1) that a socially engaged sangha that managed and cared for land and water resources both as an instrument of patronage and as a means of tackling human suffering helps to diffuse the polarized de­ bate between the “eco-apologists” and their critics, with its narrow focus on whether or not monks were concerned with the suffering of animals or the “beauty” of “nature”; (2) that landscape data from “beyond the monastery walls” help to challenge both Schmithausen’s notion of a “passive” Buddhist environmentalism that sought to “tran­ scend” nature through detachment, and related arguments that stress the purely “sym­ bolic” function of early Buddhist garden imagery. My position is that such motifs are less symbols of the sangha’s transcendence of nature than of its engagement with, on the one hand, lowland hydraulic landscapes that reflected a mixture of local ecological-ritual real­ ities and “translocal” ideals from the Gangetic valley and, on the other, its increasing in­ cursion into upland forested zones; and finally (3) that the distribution of hilltop monas­ teries, habitational settlements, and simply adapted “monastic rock-shelters” challenges clear-cut polarizations between isolated, magical guhas, and fully transformed, rock-cut lenas and related social constructions of the marginal and dangerous forest. What is clear from the SSP data is that the sangha’s ability to straddle both of these socio-ecological environments was crucial for the establishment and development of institutionalized monasticism in the area. further reading Ali, Daud. “Gardens in Early Indian Court Life.” Studies in History 19, no. 2 (2003): 221– 52. https://doi.org/10.1177/025764300301900204 Ali, Daud, and E. Flatt, eds. Garden and Landscape Practices in Pre-Colonial India: Histo­ ries from the Deccan. London: Routledge, 2012. Brancaccio, Pia. “Aṅgulimāla or the Taming of the Forest.” East and West 49, no. 1/4 (1999): 105–118. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29757423 Brancaccio, Pia. “Representations of Indasalaguha: Rock-Cut Monasteries and the Shift­ ing Attitudes Towards Buddhist Asceticism.” In South Asian Archaeology and Art 2012: South Asian Religions and Visual Forms in their Archaeological Context, edited by V. Lefèvre, A. Didier, and B. Mutin, 427–42. Tunhout: Brepols, 2016. DeCaroli, Robert. “Snakes and Gutters: Nāga Imagery, Water Management, and Buddhist Rainmaking Rituals in Early South Asia.” Archives of Asian Art 69, no. 1 (2019): 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1215/00666637-7329873 Elverskog, Johan. The Buddha’s Footprint: An Environmental History of Asia. Philadel­ phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. Page 15 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022 Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment Granoff, Phyllis. “What’s in a Name? Rethinking ‘Caves.’” In Living Rock: Bud­ dhist, Hindu and Jain Cave Temples in Western Deccan, edited by P. Brancaccio, 18–29. Mumbai: Marg Publication, 2013. (p. 232) Heirman, Ann. “How to Deal with Dangerous and Annoying Animals: A Vinaya Perspective.” Religions 10, no. 2 (2019): 113. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10020113 Hidas, Gergely. A Buddhist Ritual Manual on Agriculture: Vajratuṇḍasamayakalparāja – Critical Edition and Translation. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2019. https:// doi.org/10.1515/9783110621051-001 Morrison, Kathleen, D., S.B. Hecht, and C. Padoch, eds. The Social Lives of Forests: Past, Present, and Future of Woodland Expansion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Schmithausen, Lambert. “The Early Buddhist Tradition and Ecological Ethics.” Journal of Buddhist Ethics 4, no. 1 (1997): 1–74. Shaw, Julia. Buddhist Landscapes in Central India: Sanchi Hill and Archaeologies of Reli­ gious and Social Change, c. 3rd Century BC to 5th Century AD. London: Routledge, 2007. Shaw, Julia. “Religion, ‘Nature’ and Environmental Ethics in Ancient India: Archaeologies of Human:Non-Human Suffering and Well-being in early Buddhist and Hindu Contexts.” World Archaeology 48, no. 4 (2016): 517–543. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/00438243.2016.1250671 Shaw, Julia. The Garden, the Field and the Forest: A Deep-Time Study of Nature and Soci­ ety in South Asia, In Preparation.Trautmann, Thomas, R. Elephants and Kings: An Envi­ ronmental History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Tucker, Mary, E., and D.R. Williams, eds. Buddhism and Ecology: The Interconnection of Dharma and Deeds, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1997. Notes: (1.) Julia Shaw, “Religion, ‘Nature’ and Environmental Ethics in Ancient India,” World Ar­ chaeology 48 (2016): 517–43; Krista Gilliland, I. A. Simpson, et al., “The Dry Tank,” Jour­ nal of Archaeological Sciences 40 (2013): 1012–28. (2.) Julia Shaw, Buddhist Landscapes in Central India (London: Routledge, 2007). (3.) Julia Shaw, “Environmentalism as Religio-Medical ‘Worldview,’ ” Current Swedish Ar­ chaeology 26 (2019): 61–78. (4.) M. E Tucker et al., eds., Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology (London: Rout­ ledge, 2016); Mike Hulme, “Varieties of Religious Engagement with Climate Change,” in Routledge Handbook, 239–48; Julia Shaw, “Archaeology, Climate Change and Environmen­ tal Ethics,” World Archaeology 48 (2016): 453. Page 16 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022 Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment (5.) Felix Riede, “Deep Pasts—Deep Futures,” Current Swedish Archaeology 26 (2019): 11–28. (6.) Felix Riede, “Deep Pasts”; Shaw, “Religion,” 520–521. (7.) Shaw, “Religion,” 521–22. (8.) M. D. Morrison and M. T. Lycett, “Constructing Nature,” in The Social Lives of Forests, ed. Susanna Hecht et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 148–60. (9.) Damian Evans, “Airborne Laser Scanning as a Method for Exploring Long-Term SocioEcological Dynamics in Cambodia,” Journal of Archaeological Science 74 (2016): 164–75. Eleanor Kingwell-Banham and Dorian Fuller, “Shifting Cultivators in South Asia: Expan­ sion, Marginalisation and Specialisation over the Long Term,” Quaternary International 249 (2012): 84–95. (10.) Shaw, “Archaeology,” 450. (11.) Yama Dixit et al., “Abrupt Weakening of the Summer Monsoon in Northwest India 4100 Yr Ago,” Geology 42 (2014): 339–42. (12.) Eleanor Kingwell-Banham et al., “Early Agriculture in South Asia,” in The Cam­ bridge World History, ed. G. Barker and C. Goucher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 261–88. (13.) C. R. Strain, “Engaged Buddhist Practice and Ecological Ethics,” Worldviews 20 (2016), 189–210; Shaw, “Religion,” 525–26. (14.) Lambert Schmithausen, “The Early Buddhist Tradition and Ecological Ethics,” Jour­ nal of Buddhist Ethics 4 (1997): 1–74. (15.) Strain, “Engaged,” 197. (16.) Schmithausen, “The Early,” 12–14. (17.) Schmithausen, “The Early,” 2. (18.) Daud Ali, “Gardens in Early Indian Court Life,” Studies in History 19 (2003): 221–52; Gregory Schopen, “The Buddhist ‘Monastery’ and the Indian Garden,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 126 (2006): 487–505. (19.) R. L. Brown, “Nature as Utopian Space on the Early Stūpas of India,” in Buddhist Stūpas In South Asia, ed. J. Hawkes and A. Shimada, 63–80 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009). (20.) Akira Shimada, “The Use of Garden Imagery in Early Indian Buddhism,” in Garden and Landscape Practices in Pre-Colonial India, ed. D. Ali and E. Flatt (London: Routledge, 2012), 18–38. Page 17 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022 Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment (21.) Schopen, “The Buddhist ‘Monastery,’ ” 498–505. (22.) Shaw, Buddhist, 228–32 (23.) Shaw, Buddhist, 233–53; Julia Shaw, “Early Indian Buddhism, Water and Rice,” in Water Technologies and Societies in the Past and Present, ed. Y. Zhuang and M. Altaweel, 223–55 (London: UCL Press, 2018). (24.) R. A. L. H. Gunawardana, “Irrigation and Hydraulic Society in Early Medieval Cey­ lon,” Past and Present 53 (1971): 3–27. (25.) R. A. E. Coningham and P. Gunawardhana, Anuradhapura, Vol. 3: The Hinterland (Oxford: BAR International Series, 2013); Shaw, “Early Indian,” 238. (26.) Julia Shaw and J. V. Sutcliffe, “Water Management, Patronage Networks, and Reli­ gious Change,” South Asian Studies 19 (2003): 94–95; Robert DeCaroli, “Snakes and Gut­ ters,” Archives of Asian Art 69 (2019): 1–19. (27.) Vitus Angermeier, “Untangling Multiple Topographical Systems,” eJournal of Indian Medicine 9 (2017): 39-62; Francis Zimmermann, “May Godly Clouds Rain for You!” in Du corps humain: Au carrefour de plusieurs savoirs en Inde, ed. E. Ciurtin (Paris: De Boc­ card. Studia Asiatica, 2004), 371–84; Giuliano Giustarini, “Healthcare in Pali Buddhism,” Journal of Religion and Health 57 (2018): 1224–36; Julia Shaw and Naomi Sykes, “New Directions in the Archaeology of Medicine,” World Archaeology 50 (2019): 367–68; Shaw, “Environmentalism,” 70–71. (28.) Shaw, “Environmentalism,” 67–71. (29.) Shaw, “Religion,” 519, (30.) Shaw, “Early Indian,” 242. (31.) Kingwell-Banham et al., “Early Agriculture.” (32.) Kingwell-Banham, “Dry, Rainfed, or Irrigated?” Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 11 (2019): 6489. (33.) Shaw, “Early Indian,” 242–47. (34.) Pia Brancaccio, “Monumentality, Nature and World Heritage Monuments,” in De­ colonising Heritage in South Asia, ed. H. P. Ray (New Delhi: Routledge, 2018), 112–13. (35.) Robert DeCaroli, Haunting the Buddha (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Julia Shaw, “Nāga Sculptures in Sanchi’s Archaeological Landscape,” Artibus Asiae 64 (2004): 5–59. (36.) R. S. Cohen, “Naga, Yaksini, Buddha: Local Deities and Local Buddhism at Ajanta,” History of Religions 37 (1988): 340–60. Page 18 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022 Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment (37.) Shaw, “Nāga,” 18–19; cf. Jacob Dalton, “The Early Development of the Padmasamb­ hava Legend in Tibet,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 124, no. 4: 759–72. (38.) J. C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009); Peter Grave, “Beyond the Mandala,” World Archaeology 27 (1995): 243–65. (39.) Derek Kennet et al, eds., Excavations at Paithan, Maharashra (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), 4. (40.) Morrison and Lycett, “Constructing,” 158–60; Shaw and Sykes, “New,” 370; Eleanor Kingwell-Banham et al., “Spice and Rice,” Antiquity 92 (2018): 1552–70. (41.) Janice Stargardt, “Water for the State or Water for the People?” in Water Societies and Technologies from the Past and Present, ed. Y. Zhuang and A. Altaweel (London: UCL Press, 2018), 256–68. (42.) K. D. Morrison, “Dharmic Projects, Imperial Reservoirs, and New Temples of India,” Conservation and Society 8 (2010): 182–95. (43.) G. D. Sontheimer, “Religious Endowments in India,” Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft 69 (1964): 45–100; M. D. Willis, The Archaeology of Hindu Ritual (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). (44.) Gregory Bailey and I. Mabbett, The Sociology of Early Buddhism (Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 2003), 13; Patrick Olivelle, “The Beast and the Ascetic,” in As­ cetics and Brahmins, ed. P. Olivelle (Florence: University of Florence Press, 2006), 94–96; Francis Zimmermann, “May Godly,” 274. (45.) G. Benavides, “Economy,” in Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism, ed. D.S. Lopez Jr. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 77–102. (46.) J. D. Hawkes and R. Abbas, “Copper Plates in Context,” Pratnatattva 22 (2016): 41– 71. (47.) Gregory Schopen, “Doing Business for the Lord,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 114 (1994): 527–54. (48.) Julia Shaw, “Monasteries, Monasticism, and Patronage in Ancient India,” South Asian Studies 27, no. 2 (2011): 111–30. (49.) Johan Elverskog, “(Asian Studies + Anthropocene),4” The Journal of Asian Studies 73 (2014): 963–74. (50.) Shaw, “Religion,” 529. (51.) Kenneth Zysk, Asceticism and Healing in Ancient India (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsi­ dass, 1998). Page 19 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022 Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment (52.) N. E. Falk, “Wilderness and Kingship in Ancient South Asia,” History of Religions 13 (1973): 1–15. (53.) T. R. Trautmann, Elephants and Kings: An Environmental History (Chicago: Universi­ ty of Chicago Press, 2015), 57. Cf. R. L. Brown, “Telling the Story in Art of the Monkey’s Gift of Honey to the Buddha,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute 23 (2009): 43–52; Shaw, Bud­ dhist, 133–34; Jātaka Stories, https://jatakastories.div.ed.ac.uk/stories-in-art/search/? descriptors=elephant. (54.) Shaw, Buddhist, 228–32, 250. (55.) Shaw, Buddhist, 42–43. (56.) Sam Van Schaik, Buddhist Magic (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2020), 43–44; Peter Skilling, “The Rakṣā Literature of the Srāvakayana,” Journal of the Pali Text Society 16 (1992): 159, 168. Grateful thanks to Sarah Shaw for helpful discussion. (57.) Lance Cousins, “Cetiya and Thupa: The Textual Sources,” in Relic and Relic Worship in Early Buddhism, ed. J. Stargardt and M. Willis (London: British Museum Press, 2018), 22; A. K. Coomaraswamy, Yakṣas (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1931), II, 17. (58.) Edmund Hardy, “Ueber den upsprung des samajja,” in Album Kern, ed. H. Kern (Lei­ den: E. J. Brill, 1903), 61–66. (59.) D. D. Kosambi, “At the Crossroads: Mother Goddess Cult Sites in Ancient India, Part I,” The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1, no. 2 (1960): 17–31. (60.) Cousins, “Cetiya,” 22–23. (61.) Shaw, Buddhist, 142. (62.) Shaw, Buddhist, 228–32, figure 13.6. (63.) Shaw, Buddhist, 85–86, 136, figure 11.1. (64.) L. M. Olivieri et al., “Archaeology and Settlement History in a Test Area of the Swat Valley,” East and West 56 (2006): 73–150. (65.) Shaw, Buddhist, 129–130, 135–136, figure 11.23. (66.) Di Caroli, “Snakes,” 1–19. (67.) Shaw, Buddhist, 86–87; plate 49. (68.) Shaw, Buddhist, 110–11; cf Willis, The Archaeology, 197. (69.) Shaw, Buddhist, 115–18; M. D. Willis et al., Buddhist Reliquaries from Ancient India (London: British Museum Press, 2000). Page 20 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022 Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment (70.) Shaw, Buddhist, 117. (71.) Shaw, Buddhist, 117. (72.) Shaw, Buddhist, 113; R. C. Agrawal, “Stupas and Monasteries: A Recent Discovery from Satdhara,” in South Asian Archaeology 1995, ed. R. Allchin and B. Allchin (Oxford: IBH, 1997), 410–11, figures 9–10. (73.) Shaw, Buddhist, 129–30. (74.) Shaw, Buddhist, 36–37. (75.) Shaw, Buddhist, 37, 117, pl. 52; Harry Falk, “The Preamble at Pāṅgurāriyā,” in Baud­ dhavidyāsudhākaraḥ: Studies in Honour of Heinz Bechert, ed. H. Bechert et al. (SwisttalOdendorf: Indica et Tibetica, 1997), 107–21. (76.) M. D. Willis, “Avalokiteśvara of the Six Syllables,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute 23 (2013): 221–29. (77.) Phyllis Granoff, “What’s in a Name? Rethinking ‘Caves,’ ” in Living Rock, ed. P. Bran­ caccio (Mumbai: Marg Publications), 23–24. (78.) Granoff, “What’s,” 23. (79.) Granoff, “What’s,” 27. (80.) Granoff, “What’s,” 23. (81.) Morrison and Lycett, “Constructing”; Kingwell-Banham et al., “Spice”; Shaw and Sykes, “New,” 370. (82.) Brancaccio, “Monumentality,” 113. (83.) Pia Brancaccio, “Representations of Indasalaguha,” in South Asian Archaeology and Art 2012, ed. V. Lefèvre et al. (Tunhout: Brepols, 2016), 427–42. (84.) Granoff, “What’s,” 20. (85.) Granoff, “What’s,” 23–24. (86.) Erwin Neumayer, Prehistoric Rock Art of India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011). (87.) K. G. Zysk, “The Evolution of Anatomical Knowledge in Ancient India,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 106 (1986): 687–705. (88.) Shaw, Buddhist, 215, figure 13.1. (89.) Shaw, Buddhist, 110–45. Page 21 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022 Buddhism and the “Natural” Environment (90.) Ann Heirman, “How to Deal with Dangerous and Annoying Animals: A Vinaya Per­ spective,” Religions 10 (2019). (91.) Bhikkhu Nāṇamoli and B. Bodhi, The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 1995), 102–7. (92.) Sarah Shaw, The Spirit of Buddhist Meditation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), 370–82. (93.) Shaw, The Spirit, 369. (94.) Pia Brancaccio, The Buddhist Caves at Aurangabad (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 11. (95.) Coomaraswamy, Yakṣas, II, 1–12. (96.) Coomaraswamy, Yakṣas, II, 1–12, citing Milindapañha IV: 3, 20. (97.) Cousins, “Cetiya,” 22; Lambert Schmithausen, “The Problem of the Sentience of Plants in Earliest Buddhism,” Studia Philologica Buddhica Monograph Series 6 (Tokyo: In­ ternational Institute for Buddhist Studies 1991), 26ff; Kingwell-Banham and Fuller, “Shift­ ing,” 89–90. (98.) Pia Brancaccio, “Aṅgulimāla or the Taming of The Forest,” East and West 49 (1999): 109, 117. (99.) A. Agarwal and S. Narain, Dying Wisdom (New Delhi: Centre of Science and Environ­ ment, 1997). Julia Shaw Julia Shaw is Associate Professor in South Asian Archaeology at University College London, Institute of Archaeology. Current research interests include South Asian en­ vironmental and socio-religious history; archaeology as environmental humanities; religious and medico-environmental worldviews and disability studies; interfaces be­ tween environmental archaeology, ecological public health, and global climatechange activism. She has been conducting archaeological fieldwork in India since 1998 and directs the Sanchi Survey Project. She is author of Buddhist Landscapes in Central India (Routledge, 2007), articles on topics related to the archaeology of Bud­ dhism, Hinduism, socio-ecological history, land and water governmentality, and land­ scape survey archaeology and remote-sensing; and editor of four special volumes of World Archaeology (Archaeologies of Water; Religious Change; Environmental Ethics, and Medicine and Healthcare). Page 22 of 22 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 22 June 2022