THE BUDDHA’S HOUSE87 unique identity for itself. The caitya frames several arched elements with decorative patterns, the latter perhaps some kind of latticework to let air and light in. The roof, adorned with pinnacles, is well formed with an elegant curved shape in section that follows the geometric contour of the caitya arch. Various details define different types of caityas: those depicted in and around Mathura show a series of end beams along the inner line of the arch, while those from Gandhāra show a serrated edge. The codified caitya arch appears in various styles of housing or fram ing the Buddha, from enclosing an interiorized space (fig. 3.14) to a sort of floating and sheltering canopy (fig. 3.15). Whether for stylistic or indexical reasons, the “floating” caitya also appears, mostly from Gandhāra, almost like a halo for a seated, standing, or even walking Buddha. Considering that the Bhārhut and Sāñcī reliefs were produced more than two hundred years after the time of the Buddha, it is unclear 3.8 Swans “circumambulating” the gandhakuṭī, Mathurā, second century (C. Sivara ma murti, Birds and Animals in Indian Sculpture [New Delhi: National Museum, 1974]). 3.9 The Buddha under a trabeated roof structure, Gandhāra (© The Trustees of the British Museum, London).
3.10 The Buddha figure inside a shrine structure, Gandhāra (Museum of Art and Archaeol ogy, University of Missouri–Columbia).
THE BUDDHA’S HOUSE89 whether the hut in the Jetavana relief is an actual representation of a structure the Buddha lived in, a simple adaptation from common dwellings of that time, or a stylized convention for significant buildings. Other representations of residential architecture of that time, as depicted in numerous examples from Gandhāra and Bhārhut, do resemble the huts at Jetavana. What is significant is that the profile of the Jetavana huts from Bhārhut and Sāñcī takes on an emblematic character, not only representing the bare facts of a sheltering structure but also embodying subtler aspects of the ascetic project, including representing the Buddha. Following the doctrinal norms of Buddhist art, from perhaps the time of the 3.12 The Buddha seated in a cham ber with an upwardly curved double roof, Pagan, ca. eleventh to thirteenth centuries (drawing by Katelyn Hudson based on an image in Gordon H. Luce, Old Burma–Early Pagán [Locust Valley, NY: Augustin, 1969]). 3.11 The Buddha seen in front of a hut while Sujata offers him a bowl of milk and honey, Borobudur, ca. tenth century (William Cohn, Buddha in der Kunst des Ostens [Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1925], 59).
90THE HERMIT’S HUT Buddha to the second century BCE the Buddha was not represented directly but was conveyed through the so-called aniconic visual marks such as his footprint, the wheel of teaching, bodhi tree, or stupa. In the repertoire of aniconic signs or marks of the Buddha, the hut motif is a possible contender, even if it is not as widespread as the established ones. Yet there are many examples of that motif that have been overlooked by scholars studying these aniconic representations.24 A hut with a caitya motif depicted in the harmikā (cubical structure 3.13 The two gandhakuṭīs at Jetavana, Bhārhut, ca. third to first centuries BCE (drawing by Katelyn Hudson based on an image in Fergusson and Burgess, Cave Temples of India). 3.14 The Buddha under a caitya-arch structure, Gandhāra (Ingholt, Gandhāran Art in Pakistan, plate 127).
THE BUDDHA’S HOUSE91 atop a stupa) of a stupa from Bhārhut (figs. 3.16 and 3.17) and one functioning as a gateway in a bodhighara ensemble on a medallion from Mathura (fig. 3.18) strongly allude to the representational significance of a house associated with, in all probability, the Buddha.25 These are examples of nonanthropomorphic representations of the Buddha. There are many striking examples of a valorized visualization of the hut motif. The image of a palanquin shaped as a caitya, interpreted by French historian Alfred Foucher as bearing Queen Maya pregnant with the Buddha (fig. 3.19), and a caitya sheltering the triratna (trident) mark of the Buddha (fig. 3.20), both from Gandhāra, offer examples of the honorific use of the motif. A remarkable statue from Gandhāra depicts what is 3.15 Standing Buddha figures framed by caitya arch, Gandhāra, second to third centuries (drawing by Katelyn Hudson based on an image at the British Museum, London). 3.16 A caitya arch inside the harmikā of a stupa, from a relief at the Bhārhut stupa, second century BCE (Coomaraswamy, La sculpture de Bharhut).
3.17 A caitya arch inside the harmikā of a stupa, Bhārhut, second century BCE (Foucher, L’art grécobouddhique, 53). 3.18 Image of a bodhighara showing a caitya arch, Mathurā, ca. first century BCE to first century CE (J. Ph. Vogel, La sculpture de Mathurâ [Paris: van Gest, 1930], plate 14).
3.19 Queen Māyā carrying the unborn Siddhārtha in a caitya-shaped palanquin, Gandhāra (Foucher, L’art gréco-bouddhique, fig. 159). 3.20 The triratna sheltered in a caitya arch, Gandhāra (Foucher, L’art gréco-bouddhique, fig. 217).
94THE HERMIT’S HUT understood as a female donor with a votive object that seems to be a cross-section of a “triplelobed arched building” bearing a close resemblance to the profile of the Jetavana hut (fig. 3.21).26 A fragment of another statue from Gandhāra shows compressed scenes of the Buddha at the “fire temple” of Kaśyapa in Uruvelā; the structure is shown twice, in one the Buddha is inside framed by an entrance arch, and the other shows simply the caitya arch in profile.27 As all these examples suggest, the caitya arch, whether possessing a foliated profile or inner serrated edge or resembling a gable or dormer, as often described in modern literature, becomes a common motif in the Buddhist architectural language (fig. 3.22). While the hut marking the Buddha’s dwelling is predominantly visual, as far as the above examples are involved, representation of the Buddha’s dwelling can also be particularly and meaningfully olfactory. The evidence comes from Jetavana. The structures built at Jetavana for use as the Buddha’s dwelling were called gandhakuṭī, understood purposefully as “fragrant” or “perfumed” hut. The term came to refer to the abode of the Buddha in more than one way, and it was through the idea of this perfumed hut that the space of the Buddha’s habitation was reified in early Buddhist circles. GANDHAKUṬĪ, THE FRAGRANT HOUSE The gandhakuṭī was always considered a very special “place of the Buddha,” a structure prepared for him either during or after his life. Although the gandhakuṭī at Jetavana was better known, it was not unique to that site but was a part of the importance accorded to the accommodation of the Buddha whenever he arrived at some city with his retinue.28 Even in later periods, after the passing away of the Buddha, many monasteries would have a designated room or chamber named 3.21 A donor with a votive object shaped as a caitya, Gandhāra (Ingholt, Gandhāran Art in Pakistan, plate 188).
THE BUDDHA’S HOUSE95 gandhakuṭī that was considered to be the residence of the Buddha himself.29 Fragrant architecture was particularly highlighted in the early Buddhist tradition. In Jetavana itself, there were structures other than the gandhakuṭī that were also described as fragrant: the kosaṃbakuṭī, also meaning a fragrant hut, was one of them,30 and the cāndanamālā, sandal wood pavilion, was one among several dwellings created for the Buddha in a number of cities.31 Karerimaṇḍala mālā, or musk-rose pavilion, puspamaṇḍapa, flower pavilion, and mālāvihāra, or garland pavilion, are mentioned in various texts.32 The strongest reason for calling the house of the Buddha fragrant is the obvious one related to offering perfumes and flowers to the great teacher. The Dhammapada mentions the value of flowers and fragrance, with the sage considered as a bee. Buddhist art is full of depictions of monks or laypeople carrying floral garlands and ribbons; some such scenes were used as compositional devices in stupa art. The tropical climatic setting certainly created an environment charged with fragrance. The role of fragrance as a signifier came about because of the abundance of plants with fragrant flowers and the porous relationship of the house to its surroundings.33 The gandhakuṭī was not only the private dwelling place of the Buddha but also “the repository of floral offerings which gave its sweet perfume and its Pali name.”34 The fifth century CE text Dhammapada-aṭṭhakathā describes, in one instance, the gandhakuṭī as having pillars, three great windows, gem-set roofing tiles, pinnacles of coral, and a golden bowl on the roof.35 Ananda Coomaraswamy proposed that the golden bowl, located inside the roof, was some kind of device for sprinkling perfume on the Buddha seated within, and it is this that gave the name gandhakuṭī.36 When the hut becomes a site of devotional offerings by laypeople, the gandha kuṭī assumes more the status of what John Strong has called a cultic abode than a pragmatic house of the ascetic. A cultic characterization implies that the house was oriented more for the devotional activity of the broader community of monks and laypeople and in which the 3.22 The caitya arch as a framing device, Gandhāra (Fergusson and Burgess, Cave Temples of India, 138).
96THE HERMIT’S HUT association of flowers with the hut becomes a trope for the Buddha.37 One can identify two types of gandhakuṭī in which flowers were often treated in a much more architectural way in con nection with spaces for the Buddha. The main type is the constructed hut that was functionally lived in by the Buddha.38 The second type is a flowery pavilion or a garlanded tree canopy that was not a space of habitation but a newly constructed space that either sheltered the Buddha ceremonially or invoked his presence during times of absence (fig. 3.23). Both the pavilion and floral canopy are identifiable in narrative images showing the sheltered Buddha and bodhisattva figures (fig. 3.24). The articulation of such floral or vegetal canopies approximating architectural form is something that has not been adequately studied and commented upon (fig. 3.25). It is highly likely that the flowery pavilions were erected as temporary structures wherever the Buddha went for visits and were used to frame the platform from where he spoke and taught and, also most likely, meditated. In any case, both types—the functional hut and the flowery pavilion—shared the fragrant aspect of the Buddha’s presence, and both came to be valorized as such. The flowers in the fragrant hut were given as simple offerings but were also used to create a bower or pavilion of flowers around the Buddha, delineating a space around him. This gesture is the most literal architectural sense of a floral pavilion. The image of the flowery pavilion is depicted in a number of sculptures and corroborated by texts that show the Buddha under a form of arboreal, floral, or garland-decked canopy.39 There is a remarkable description in the Dhammapada-aṭṭhakathā in which a gardener, after meeting the Buddha, offers him flowers (fig. 3.26).40 The gardener first throws a handful of flowers over the Buddha, which remain suspended over his head like a canopy. The next handful 3.23 The Buddha seated under a tree canopy flanked by bodhisattvas, Gandhāra (Ingholt, Gandhāran Art in Pakistan, plate 254).
THE BUDDHA’S HOUSE97 thrown creates a curtain on the Buddha’s right side, eventually building a full curtain wall all around him. The flowery pavilion accompanies the Buddha as a sort of mobile gandhakuṭī wherever he moves until he reaches the actual fragrant hut, and once he enters the hut, the flowers suddenly fall all around him.41 Even if this is to be considered a fabulous story, it describes the construction of an architectural space through floral means. John S. Strong sees the phenomenon as creating a “new space” around the Buddha,42 a space that may also be seen as coterminous with the body of the archascetic. It is because of this correspondence between the body and the space delineated around it that the reverential followers could visualize a scenario of a mobile floral canopy as the Buddha moved around. Once that correspondence—between body and pavilion—emerges, it is natural to create a flowery space to represent or commemo rate the missing Buddha, who may have been either in a distant place or no longer available bodily after his passing away. The effect in either case was, as Strong has noted, to “make a space in which the absent Buddha can be present here and now.”43 3.24 The Buddha under a canopy of floral pendants, Gandhāra (Foucher, Beginnings of Buddhist Art, plate 27). 3.25 Fragments showing a floral canopy and woven parasol, Gandhāra (Indian Museum, Kolkata; photo by author).
98THE HERMIT’S HUT THE HOUSE OF ABSENCE The fragrant house is also the house of absence. I have mentioned how fragrance became a cue for invoking the absent Buddha, and thus a powerful meaning was assigned to fragrance over visual signals. There is an important passage in the Āvadāna text Puṇṇovāda-sutta-vaṇṇanā44 in which the protagonist, Puṇṇa (Pūrṇa), suggests to a group of merchants that they build a sweet-smelling pavilion to invoke the Buddha, who apparently is far away and who has never been seen by the merchants. Puṇṇa recommends to “use this [sandalwood] to build a circular pavilion (maṇḍalamālā) for the Teacher and then you shall see him.”45 Puṇṇa actually donates toward the building of an elaborate structure made of sandalwood with the intention of inviting the Buddha there. After the pavilion is completed, the text narrates, Pūrṇa climbed onto the roof of [the pavilion], that place of refuge, and stood facing the Jeta[vana] grove [where the Buddha was staying at that time in Srāvastī]. He knelt down, strewed flowers, waved incense. . . . Then, through the spiritual power of the Buddhas and the divine power of the gods, the flowers fashioned themselves into an airborne pavilion and were transported to the Jeta Grove.46 3.26 The Buddha with a mobile flower canopy, Gandhāra (Ingholt, Gandhāran Art in Pakistan, plate 188).
THE BUDDHA’S HOUSE99 In elaborating the idea of “new” space, Strong has pointed to examples of floral offerings in front of the statue of the Buddha in Buddhist image halls and of the established practice of “sweeping the gandhakuṭī”:47 What this effects ritually is the construction in the image hall itself of a floral perfumed chamber in which the presence of the Buddha can be realized here and now, even though he is in Nirvana. The Buddha, of course, is to a certain extent “present” already in his image. Presumably the gift of the devotee and the spirit in which it is arranged create a new psycho-physical environment which brings that presence out even more.48 These symbolic gandhakuṭīs, made in the form of floral offerings and flowery structures, can be described as mimetic, surrogate, or associative spaces; that is, they evoke in one form or another the original, living space of the Buddha’s dwelling. A place prepared as an abode for the living Buddha, the gandhakuṭī in its various later forms came to be a special place in which the Buddha’s presence could be recaptured for and by devotees.49 The gandhakuṭī quickly became a symbolically charged structure after the passing away of the Buddha. The most important representational aspect of the gandhakuṭī is the identification of the architectural structure with its dweller, whereby the flowery new space becomes identical with the figure of the Buddha. Later elaboration of the gandhakuṭī renders it as a glorious house or a large and elaborate temple,50 sometimes with an extraordinary quality. This is not unexpected in the context of a devotional tradition that considers the gandhakuṭī as the residence of a superhuman being. The Pūrṇāvadanā describes the Buddha’s inhabiting the gandhakuṭī in the following fabulous terms: Meanwhile, [in Jetavana], the Lord washed his feet, entered his personal cell, sat on the specially appointed seat, assumed an upright posture, and established himself in full mindfulness. As soon as the Lord, with fixed determination of mind, set foot in his perfumed chamber (gandhakuṭī), the earth shook in six different ways: the great earth stirred, quivered and quaked; it shook, trembled and shuddered. . . . The nadir rose up, the zenith sank down. The zenith rose up, the nadir sank down. . . . Then, from his body the Lord radiated an effulgent stream of golden light.51 When Buddhism approximates an institutionalized religious practice, the Buddha’s house becomes the basis for morphological configurations of later structures and campuses. Originally, in the Buddha’s
100THE HERMIT’S HUT lifetime, the residential gandhakuṭī was located in the middle of a retreat surrounded by huts of other elders and monks and various monastic facilities. Such an arrangement perhaps provided the protomonastic configuration for later elaborate monasteries built after the death of the Buddha in which the central position in the campus was taken up by a temple-stupa bearing the designation of a gandhakuṭī. It is highly possible, as Coomaraswamy observed, that after the death of the Buddha, the residential gandhakuṭī became the first shrine or temple.52 Gregory Schopen has noted certain tenth-century monasteries that continued the idea of a gandhakuṭī by designating and maintaining a space with the same name where the Buddha was thought to have been “a current resident and an abiding presence.”53 It is as if the Buddha still lived there. Some of this and related practices were facilitated by the already established idea of the homology of the Buddha and the gandhakuṭī. In brief, the essence of the gandhakuṭī was quickly expanded in both literature and architecture to characterize Buddhist temples, suggesting a morphological and semantic development from a dwelling to a shrine.54 HARMIKĀ: THE ZERO POINT The relationship between the ascetic dweller and his dwelling is a specific category in the discourse of body and building, and an extraordinarily rich one. From an immediate level in which the ascetic establishes a spatial association with his elemental structure or space, the relationship takes on multifaceted significance with the Buddha. The Buddha’s fragrant house marks an associative relationship between building and body in which the presence of one signals the presence of the other. This is possible because the house belongs to the dweller in a sort of spatial intimacy that is metrical, phenomenological, and figural. The fragrant house establishes an identity between the ascetic and his dwelling by the fact that the two coexist in the same space in which one can be substituted by the other. An intimacy, and consequently an interchangeability, between body and building is generated by the fact that the dweller is the only occupant of the space, unmediated by others. Intimacy is established by the dimensional property of the space, which is not to be confused with an ensemble of places creating a topography of here and there. The space could be seen as the projection of the body, like a garment that, in its proximity as a layer upon the body, sheathes or envelops it. A dimensional proximity is crucial for strengthening the intimacy and for the associative connection between space and its dweller. In many images, especially from Buddhist Gandhāra, Brahmanic hermits and ascetics are depicted outside their dwellings, which are, in measure and size, not much larger than a robe they might wear. It is this ontologi-
THE BUDDHA’S HOUSE101 cal intimacy that forms the basis of a heightened symbolic articulation of the ascetic figure through architectural means (fig. I.15). With the passing away of the Buddha, a whole new symbolic and representational imperative arises in Buddhist traditions (some of which started during his lifetime). The stupa as a commemorative structure is one of the most important edifices of early Buddhism, a construction practice that began immediately after the passing away of the Buddha.55 On top of most stupas there is a cubical structure known as the harmikā whose wide-ranging significance, although not fully deciphered, makes it the most polysemic and enigmatic object in Buddhist architecture. The harmikā occupies a distinctive location on the Buddhist stupa by forming the stupa’s apex and, in most cases, with a cubical structure through which rises the yaṣṭi, a vertical post, and the chhatrāvali, a series of parasols. The form of the harmikā varies from a simple enclosure (without the yaṣṭi-chhatrāvali ensemble) to fully enclosed “boxes” to an unambiguous depiction of a dwelling. There are instances of smaller votive stupas in which the harmikā is clearly an architectonic structure depicted sometimes as a hutlike piece56 and even as an elaborate multistoried mansion.57 A unique votive stupa from Bhaja shows a caitya arch at two of the levels in the multilevel harmikā (fig. 3.27). It is plausible that this representation was derived from conventional houses of that time and then conveyed in a stylized way. Yet the caitya arch is also a motif that was used for the gandhakuṭī in various representations of Jeta vana, offering a possible link to the Buddha’s house, as mentioned earlier. If the harmikā is also the Buddha’s house, what kind of house is this? While the literal meaning of the term harmikā is “little dwelling,”58 there is not a un animity as to what extent the harmikā can be regarded as a dwelling or what it signifies in the elaborate symbolical scheme of the stupa, even in cases in which the harmikā depicts the profile of a Jetavana gandhakuṭī. 3.27 A harmikā atop a votive stupa with caitya-arch openings, Bhājā (James Burgess, Report on the Buddhist Cave Temples [London: Trubner & Co., 1883], 7).
102THE HERMIT’S HUT The harmikā refers not so much to an actual residence as to a notional dwelling of the Buddha, something that can be seen as a final halt ing place in conceptualizing the ascetical itinerary. Such a speculation on the harmikā is possible from an interpretation of the significance of the stupa. The stupa is a polysemous structure built around the enigma of death and commemoration. The harmikā plays a significant part in the narrative. Among its various connotations, the harmikā has been considered as a tomb, coffin, or sarcophagus, all of which refer to the pre-Buddhist practice of creating a mound or some kind of edifice over the remains of a special person. It is first by referring to the symbolism of the “dwelling of death” that the harmikā might be described as the final abode.59 The term dhātugarbha, or “womb chamber,” before it was used for the stupa, was applied to the harmikā, thus conflating a funerary object with an abode.60 The notion of a dwelling of death is further supported by considering the harmikā as a kuṭāgāra, the initiation hut, or a house where one dies in order to be reborn.61 A funerary aspect enters here not in the sense of a literal death but rather in the sense of dying only to be born as a transformed self. The ascetic finality of receiving enlightenment or gaining awakening is interpreted as the ultimate transformation of the laboring ascetic, which is also understood as a climactic dying as far as the normative social world is concerned. This dual meaning of attaining awakening and dying is poignantly carried by the term samādhi. Samādhi is the yogic term for the last stage of meditational practice; it is also the tomb of a holy person.62 The kuṭāgāra refers symbolically to the structure of metamorphosis where one enters, dies to this world, and is born anew. The locational relationship of the harmikā in the geography of the stupa provides a more contextual understanding of this threshold condition.63 H. Sarkar, echoing the words of Buddhaghosa, compared the harmikā to the literal meaning of kuṭāgāra, a sort of sky room or lookout space in a building with multiple levels, or, described more simply, a piece within a larger ensemble that is located at the apex.64 Paul Mus addressed the phenomenon in more symbolic terms by seeing the harmikā as a “hut on a mountaintop,” where the stupa signifies a world mountain.65 The image of a structure on a mountaintop refers to the “high temple,” as Stella Kramrisch saw it, and such a location marks the point of a potent transition. Kramrisch described the “high temple” as representing “the zenithal pole of realization where this world ends and that world begins.”66 As such, the high temple marks “the point limit of the manifest and the unmanifest, the Bindu.” The harmikā is also likened to a caitya-vrksa at the top of the world mountain, whereupon the harmikā-yaṣṭi ensemble becomes analogous to the “world
THE BUDDHA’S HOUSE103 tree” and the “cosmic axis”67 and therefore demarcates a bodhimaṇḍa, a sacred space.68 Carrying fundamentally a corporeal content, the stupa also embodies living features beyond the deathly or mortuary associations surrounding it. In Buddhist ascetical constructs, the stupa is often interpreted as an embodiment of the structure of ascetic meditation in which the harmikā represents a very particular moment in the rising planes of yogic or ascetic consciousness.69 The meditational symbolism is rendered in a literal way in certain Nepalese stupas; there the harmikā is decorated with painted human eyes, “thus suggesting a human figure in the posture of meditation hidden in the stupa: the crossed legs in the base, the body up to the shoulders in the hemisphere, the head in the harmikā.”70 The significance of the stupa, with its apex as a transformative and dynamic marker, is amplified through a further analogy with the idealized body of the Buddha. This is manifested particularly in iconic representations in which the ideal ascetic body is made recognizable through specific features. In mapping ascetic physiology, Kramrisch identified the uṣṇīṣa, the cranial protuberance that purportedly occurs at the climax of ascetic meditation, as the “zero point of Nirvana.” The uṣṇīṣa signifies both the limit and rupture of the anthropomorphic figure and represents all that is “non-representable” in the physiological experience of the laboring ascetic. In other words, it is an excess. “At the zero-point, there can be no identity of any extent. Still, if this is to be conveyed by the image, a symbol, a no-thing may do it: the Uṣṇīṣa.”71 Ananda Coomaraswamy similarly interpreted the harmikā as the liminality of understanding, the very edge of production and expression that make up our cognitive, experiential, and normative world. Coomaraswamy remarked about the stupa that “all that is mortal [is] contained within, and all that is immortal exceed[s] the structure.”72 Clearly, the harmikā visibly marks that tenuous point, the threshold of embodiment and its limit, and thus an excess. These two interpretations suggest a coherence of significance between the uṣṇīṣa and the harmikā. In the symbolically charged scenario of the stupa, an innocuous little dwelling presents a vibrant polysemy: the harmikā is both an image and structure of awakening, a locus of the final transformation of the ascetic. The awakening corresponds to an ultimate initiation that, in certain ascetic interpretations, is akin to the condition of dying and being born anew. The phenomenon is emblematized when the harmikā is placed in its critical spatial location either in the geography of the stupa or analogically as the uṣṇīṣa in the physiognomy of the iconic, laboring Buddha. Both conditions point to a heightened moment—as nirvāṇa embodied; as paradoxical as this may seem, it is a manifestation of something that
104THE HERMIT’S HUT cannot be visually realized. In other words, the harmikā is the last vestige of embodiment or incorporation, or, as Stella Kramrisch saw the uṣṇīṣa, the “zero point.”73 Despite the profusion and ambiguity of meanings, the harmikā refers to something close at hand: a finality. The harmikā as the house of enlightenment is the final dwelling metaphorically constructed on the body of the stupa or analogized on the figure of the Buddha such that it can still be envisioned as part of the ascetic journey. It is the image of the last vestige of things that binds one corporeally and cognitively to the world; it is, in fact, the last thing. The harmikā is a glimpse of the last form before the unspeakable nothingness.
105 CHAPTER 4 The Two Houses Body and Building in the Ascetic Imagination The Buddha, who was Siddhārtha until only a while ago, sits under the fig tree in the forest of Uruvelā in deep meditation after going through various rounds of ascetic exercises and renunciatory wanderings. Then comes the brilliant moment, something that would signify the ultimate episode in a grand journey. At a point in the meditation, a deep realization dawns on Siddhārtha, and he exclaims, “The rafters are shattered, the ridge-pole is destroyed, and the house builder will no longer be able to erect the house again.”1 This excerpt of the verses from the Dhammapada, attributed to the Buddha, offers one of the few instances of a literary approximation of the highly enigmatic and ineffable experience of nirvāṇa. Literary and visual artists will struggle with re-creating that critical moment of the ascetic project; the Dhammapada verses describe in cataclysmic terms arriving at the ascetic telos that involves a dramatic destruction of the body. The verses also make it obvious that the destruction has been carried out in the framework of a building. Rather than affirming the mysterious efficacy of nirvāṇa or the truism of the psychophysiological transformation engineered in the body, it is more relevant, as far as this study is concerned, to follow two notions embedded in that cryptic statement on shattered rafters and destroyed ridgepoles. There is, first, the body and building reference in which the body is conceived of and named as gaha, or “home/house.” And, second, there is the ushering of the dismantling of that architectural edifice. Two consequential questions emerge from this event: Why a building imagery for the body? And why is the event rendered in a cataclysmic manner? It is clear that gaha is the objective of this destructive imperative.
106THE HERMIT’S HUT Gaha is home in its normative sense, that is, being-in-the-world, socially, familially, and phenomenally. The consequence of the shattering of the gaha roof in this volatile rendition is, however, more than ordinary. In the Buddha’s description, the event coincides with the final goal of asceticism, of freeing oneself from the tethers of the world. The event constitutes a finality in a series of critical episodes in the ascetic process. The climactic nature of this act is premised by an ascetic conceptualization in which the body is like a hut whose existing lineaments and ligaments must be shattered before a recalibrated life can begin. “Looking for the architect of the house,” the Buddha continues, “I ran to no avail through a round of many births. But, now maker of the house, you have been seen and you have been known, and you shall not erect this house again.” Clearly, this is a vivid body and building association in which the body-building is conceived of as a “last hut.” The house-body stands as the last bastion—antimaśarīraṃ—in what appears to be a singleminded pursuit by the ascetic to literally deconstruct the existing fabric of life.2 Antimaśarīraṃ, or the notion of a last body, lies at the heart of most ascetic practices. In the Buddhist sense, the destruction of the last body is an analog of nirvāṇa, the climactic moment in the herculean journey involving degrees of renunciation and stages of labor. The last body is, however, not a conclusive end; it is a prelude to a better and perfected body. The reaching of the last body is akin to inaugurating a new life in a teleological itinerary following the nullification of old parameters, or in a “logic of exchange,” the giving up of a present body to “receive the adamantine body of an enlightened one.”3 What is critical in the particular verses cited in the Dhammapada is how an architectural equivalence for the cataclysmic moment is set in the trope of the shattered hut. The equivalence suggests a transaction between body and building, with the implication that both share attributes of home and thus are sites of domiciliary discourses. That there are two habitations of the human—body and building—is an important theoretical articulation found in a number of Buddhist texts as well as in popular practice beyond Buddhism. The idea of two human habitations provides a compelling imagery of, first, the hut as the image of self and, second, the hut as a hieroglyph of home. Why a nondescript structure such as a hut should provide an ideation of the self can be understood from an ascetic viewpoint, from the fundamental status of dwelling in ascetic discourse and practice, and the intimacy that develops between the ascetic and the singular space of his habitation. I trace in the following that relationship and some of its complex proliferation.
THE TWO HOUSES107 BODY AS BUILDING The shattered house is not the only or first occasion of contemplating the body in architectural terms. The body-building equation is in fact an archetypal theme with both phenomenological and cosmological significance. As a foundational and cognitive datum, the body has been a natural measure of the world in an increasingly expanding scope of scale and imagination. If the body confers a microcosmic scale in this expansive schema, a macrocosmos is defined by the immediate environmental reach broadening to the larger universe, in both perceptual and metaphysical senses. These two cosmos forms situate the human in a bracketed scheme of things within which bases of knowledge and cognition are formed with whatever methods are in activity at a particular time—mythological, empirical, natural, quasi-scientific, or scientific. Humans, however, live on a mediated horizon defined by the spatial, social, and practiced world of the human: the lived world. Architecture, buildings, and constructed spaces are constitutive elements of the lived world as well as instruments of mediation between the individual self/ body and the immense universe. Mesocosmos is one way of describing this mediated horizon. In the ensemble of ideated architecture, with performance beyond pragmatic priorities, the hermit’s hut embodies mesocosmic properties by mediating between the macrocosmic scale of the world and the microcosmic dimension of the human (fig. I.15).4 This imbrication of scale forms a fundamental discursive tenor in Indian asceticism in which the mediated relationship between body and building is particularly intensified. From the third century BCE or so, the hermit and the hut began to mirror each other, producing an intimacy and inseparability through a set of conventions in art, architecture, and literature. The intertwining has its basis in lifeworld situations that inform ascetical reflections and conceptualizations. Some kind of dwelling space, whether a cave, tree, or nondescript structure, is confronted from day one of the ascetic experience. Though caves and trees are regular characters in the ascetic theater, the hutlike dwelling is the lead player. Although morphologically indistinct from putative structures built in villages and towns of that time, the ascetic dwelling is characterized by its physical and spatial intimacy with its inhabitant, a consequence of the fact that the ascetic hut is inhabited by or intended for a single person. This is an important criterion for a phenomenological understanding of the ascetic hut, for the moment when two or more or a family is entertained, there is a different ontology: the spatial property changes with the figure and density of occupation. It is the singular occupation of the hut by a hermit that
108THE HERMIT’S HUT establishes the primary tenet of an imbricated habitation. The intimacy and proximity between dweller and his dwelling make the space a projection of the hermit’s body. The hut, as long as it is inhabited by an ascetic, presents an anthropological and biotic exchange with the dweller. It is in this sense that the Buddhist requisites for a monk consider lodging, along with clothing, as the zone of intimacy between the ascetic and the world. The notion of intimacy does not suggest a mystical unity but an ontological codependence between corporeal and spatial attributes. The relationship connotes a spatial “my-ness” for someone who is, paradoxically, struggling to go beyond the “my” or “I.” The intimacy is consolidated or codified in Buddhist ideology by what is known as the sugata dimension, in which the personal artifacts and acquisitions of a monk, especially his architectural space, reference the bodily dimension of the Buddha (sugata, or “one who has gone to the better,” is an epithet given to the Buddha). With the dimensional reference not generated by the resident monk himself but by the surrogate, glorified body of the Buddha, it projects an idealized intimacy of dweller and dwelling. The Prātimokṣa Sūtra of the Mahāsāṃghikas mentions, “When a monk himself is begging to have a hut built which has no donor, being intended for himself, it should be made [according to measure]. This is the measure: in length, twelve spans of the Sugata-span; in width, seven spans inside.”5 Considering that the measure of the Buddha body proposed by the sugata dimension is an idealized one, the actual measure has not been without controversy, for different texts suggest different measures of the Buddha, sometimes so abnormally high as to make the Buddha “freakishly tall.”6 However, a reasonable estimation makes the sugata span about 25 cm, which would make a hut about 3 m by 1.75 m. It is this dimensional and spatial intimacy that inaugurates other sets of associational relationships at metonymic and symbolic levels. Represented through literary, visual, and architectural means, the ontological intimacy forms the basis of a heightened symbolic articulation of the ascetic figure. The Buddha’s own hut, the fragrant structure known as the gandhakuṭī, is a good point of departure for establishing a series of associations between body and building. A bowl exuding fragrance from the ceiling of the hut where the Buddha lived may have provided the characterization of the perfumed hut. There were also literal fragrant huts or canopies made of flower garlands under which the Buddha usually sat to teach or meditate. The intimate association of the Buddha with floral structures formed the basis for mimetic reconstructions, including erecting flowery canopies to reclaim an absent Buddha. The sweeping of the floor by disciples, initially practiced in the original gandhakuṭī, is another spatial ritual of recalling the absent body. Where the Buddha is involved, the body and building relationship is
THE TWO HOUSES109 based on the particularity of the Buddha’s status as a supreme ascetic or yogi. On numerous occasions, yogic ascesis itself—the process engineered in the body—is spoken of in architectural terms. The Milindapañha mentions that the five developed mental states—the five cardinal virtues of Buddhist practice—are moral habit, faith, energy, mindfulness, and concentration, the last being the most important. The five virtues and their interrelationships are conceived of in an interdependent structure. “As in a house with a ridge-pole all the rafters go to the ridge-pole, lean towards it and join it, and the ridge-pole is pointed to as their chief, even so all those mental states that are skilled have concentration (samādhi) as the chief, they lean, tend, and incline towards concentration.”7 The Majjhima-Nikāya, similarly, mentions, “Just as the roof plate of a domed mansion is the peak that ties together and holds together, just so the sheltering roof of the skilful habits (is the peak that ties together and holds together) the six states of consciousness.”8 It is this architectural analogy of the ascetic body that facilitates the equation of the attainment of final awakening with the dramatic shattering of the roof plate. Some of these literary and allegorical methods of establishing a relationship between a human and architectural figure already started with purposefulness from around the third century BCE. With the practice of representing the Buddha anthropomorphically, the relationship receives a visual articulation, with the Buddha often shown as housed or framed within an architectural ensemble. FRAMING THE BUDDHA, HOUSING THE BUDDHA The representation of the Buddha is a critical topic in the history of Buddhist iconography as well as its ideology. Beginning with aniconic methods depicting the master teacher through his attributes or emblems, the representation of the Buddha eventually resorted to an anthropomorphic figure. Even if the shift meant a general acceptance of human morphology, the main challenge before the Buddhist artists was how to represent an idealized human being such as the Buddha. The idealization refers to a successful ascetic, someone who by dint of his assiduous labor and contemplative exertion has become a perfected human being. In Buddhist narratives, becoming a successful ascetic, a mahāsamana, exemplified especially by the life of the Buddha, is marked by the cataclysmic moment of having attained nirvāṇa. Although various ascetic groups maintained different interpretations of this singular phenomenon by calling it śūnyata, bouddho, mokṣa, or kaivalya, the idea of awakening as a teleological climax remains the final achievement of the perfected ascetic. It is not surprising that there were
110THE HERMIT’S HUT attempts to both conceptualize and then visualize the tell-tale signs of that critical condition, even if the task was a challenging one. The quandary was compounded by the fact that an explication of the full experience of awakening is puzzling. It is the prerogative of the experiencer or attainer, who employs metaphors and allegories to make literary approximations of what is a deeply internal psychosomatic experience. The struggle of the artist lies in exposing that inexplicable moment in visual or narrative terms. The image of the Buddha in the bhūmisparśa mudrā (touching the earth as witness), already codified by the third century BCE, is perhaps the ideal representation of the ascetic having attained the pinnacle of his dedicated labor. In a typical image, the Buddha is shown in the seated meditative posture touching the earth, or bhūmi, with his hand to bear it as witness to the just-concluded dynamic of awakening (fig. 4.1). The image depicts the state of the Buddha immediately after achieving final enlightenment; it is the closest visualization of ascetic awakening, the moment the Buddha becomes a mahāsamana (superascetic) or mahāpuruṣa (superhuman). The Lakkhaṇa Sutta in the Digha Nikāya describes the codified features of the Buddha as a superascetic.9 The iconography of the Buddha is primarily about the depiction of the mahāpuruṣa, which involves the use of emblematic features, the lakkhaṇas, or signs of perfectedness of a human. There are thirty-two signs, or lakkhaṇas, to mark a superman that range from having a perfectly straight and proportioned body and male organ sheathed to having long fingers and toes, webbed feet, wheel marks on the sole of the feet, and, the most significant one, a unique protrusion on the head. A twofold challenge was faced by artists and sculptors involved in the visual rendition of the Buddha: how to depict an ineffable moment, and how to represent a superhuman figure. With the beginning of the anthropomorphic mode, the Buddha is 4.1 The Buddha in bhūmisparśa mudrā, Magadha, tenth to eleventh centuries (William Cohn, Buddha in der Kunst des Ostens [Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1925], 63).
THE TWO HOUSES111 depicted either as a singular figure or with an accoutrement that is usually of an architectural nature. When shown in a situation of preaching or meditating, or as a figure in his life story, the Buddha is often seen sheltered under a tree or vegetal canopy, or housed within an architectural framework. The phenomenon and symbolic content of the ascetic under the tree are obvious in the context of asceticism; it is the image of the mahāpuruṣa framed within an architecture that begs some inquiry beyond the literalness of a pictorial com position. The task of “framing” the Buddha is an enigmatic phenomenon that has not been extensively analyzed. A simple framing strategy (figs. 4.2–4.4), conducted for visual and artistic considerations for compositional norms, is ultimately not a satisfactory one unless the frames are considered as diagrams of dwellings. There are a few versions of this frame, including an arched motif and a rectilinear configuration. There are also variations to the arch, from a simple round arch to one with a peaked finial to what Alfred Foucher described as a “trefoil arch”; the latter, widely known as a caitya arch, developed as a signature motif in the Buddhist visual repertoire.10 Sculptural depictions of the Buddha, especially from the Gandhāra region from around the third to first centuries BCE, typically show a seated 4.2 The Buddha framed in a rectangular niche, Cave 19, Ajaṇṭā, fourth to seventh centuries (American Institute of Indian Studies, University of Chicago). 4.3 The Buddha in an arched frame, Cave 6, Ajaṇṭā, fourth to seventh centuries (American Institute of Indian Studies, University of Chicago).
112THE HERMIT’S HUT Buddha figure placed closely within an arched frame (figs. 4.5 and 4.6). It is the nature of the closeness that is remarkable: the shape of the seated figure “fits” perfectly the contour of the arch, the lower segment enclosing the splayed legs of the seated ascetic and the upper segment bulging out to encase the head and the upper body.11 While the proximity of the human figure and the architectural frame affirms the notion of a spatial intimacy, the nature of the closeness precludes pragmatic habitation. The shape of the caitya appears, profusely, in the context of the architecture of that period; it characterizes the architectural physiognomy of most Buddhist buildings, including the gandhakuṭī at Jetavana depicted on the Bhārhut relief.12 The caitya arch is certainly derived from ordinary buildings of the time and from a period before that, but in its persistent use for describing residences of ascetics, but most particularly the house of the Buddha, it acquires a representational significance in Buddhist visual narratives unlike any other architectural element or type. Besides being used to sheathe the figure of the seated Buddha, the arches in Gandhāra art were used to frame other idealized figures (such as bodhisattvas), significant icons, and important narrative scenes (fig. 4.7). The caitya arch, contoured by the figure of the seated ascetic, often appears in various cultic, ritual, or narrative practices without the literal representation of the Buddha,13 functioning in most cases as a surrogate for the mahāsamana. In such circumstances, the caitya arch has already acquired an iconic status and is being deployed for the most potent symbolic moments and locations in the Buddhist traditions. In such a condition of symbolic vitality, the caitya arch, as pointed out earlier, is seen sheltering important emblems such as the triratna (trident), clearly an aniconic representation of the Buddha figure, or a palanquin bearing a pregnant Queen Maya (figs. 3.20 and 3.21).14 A potent condition is similarly invoked when the caitya arch appears on a votive stupa, inside a harmikā, or in the tiered levels of a bodhighara (shrine building around a holy tree); it’s not without significance that 4.4 The Buddha in a columned structure with a leaf-roof dome, Gandhāra (Ingholt, Gandhāran Art in Pakistan, plate 259).
THE TWO HOUSES113 each of these conditions refers to an ideated abode of the Buddha (figs. 3.17–3.19). The sculpture of a woman donor with a votive object shaped like an arch, or, more appropriately, as a sectional cut through a structure, was remarked upon earlier for its significant reference to the gandhakuṭī in Jetavana (fig. 3.22). The graphical use of the caitya appears in other circumstances as decorative features on votive objects and narrative steles, with or quite often without a framed Buddha. Such examples do not immediately suggest a simply generic and compositional property for the arch making the iconic status less significant or even questionable; it may be seen rather as a popularization of what began as and constituted a very specific symbolic tool. In another group of examples, the Buddha is depicted within a rectilinear formation that can be described as a post-and-lintel system (figs. 4.8–4.12). Although the framing device does not immediately suggest a normative hut/house, it nonetheless exhibits an elementary tectonic system for a structure. What is most striking with this group of examples, however, making them a rather unique representation of the 4.5 The Buddha in a trefoil arch, Gandhāra, second to third centuries (Pratapaditya Pal, Light of Asia: Buddha Sakyamuni in Asian Art [Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1984], 113).
114THE HERMIT’S HUT framed Buddha, is how the topmost lintel in the orthogonal or trapezoidal frame often appears deformed or distended to make room for the intercepting head of the Buddha (or, in some examples, other important figures), making it a case of a “distended lintel.” A similar phenomenon is noticed in the case of the caitya arch in which the central peak makes accommodation for the burgeoning head of the seated Buddha. One possible interpretation of the extension is that the lintel seems to be on the verge of being deformed by the potent and superhuman ascetic who can no longer be contained within the sheltering framework of a structure. It would seem that as much as the defining space is a necessity, the framing is also challenged by the greater reality of an enlightened figure who is larger than life. This is the paradox that may have vexed Buddhist artists: how to enframe (shelter) an archascetic who is a superman and who can no longer be contained within it? How to mediate between the lived reality of a shelter and a monumental attribute of the one who is only provisionally sheltered? 4.6 The Buddha in a trefoil arch, Gandhāra, second to third centuries (Ingholt, Gandhāran Art in Pakistan, plate 543).
4.7 A narrative scene with buddhas and bodhisattvas inside various architectural frames, Gandhāra (Foucher, L’art gréco-bouddhique, fig. 79).
116THE HERMIT’S HUT There are also many instances of the Buddha’s being sheltered in a conventional framed structure without any hint of addressing this conceptual problem. What can be concluded is that the challenge was not taken up as a wide-scale exercise and under a systematically maintained visual code. The examples of distension nonetheless abound, and the challenge of both depicting and housing a mahāpuruṣa continued in the discourse of Buddhist asceticism. The distended lintel is a graphical illustration of the inherent paradoxical nature of asceticism. Without a textual or ritual reference it would be convenient to describe the lintel system as a conventional 4.8 The Buddha inside a linear frame flanked by bodhistattvas in arches, Gandhāra (Foucher, Beginnings of Buddhist Art, plate 25). 4.9 Three seated buddhas in a pillared structure, Gandhāra (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia).
THE TWO HOUSES117 decorative device of framing a Buddha figure or Buddhist scene, but it would be an oversight not to remark on this rather anomalous architectonic frame that appears frequently and systematically in Buddhist art. It is apparent that a generic trapezoidal frame functions as a compositional device in many examples but also in many other cases suggests some kind of shelter that demarcates a special zone for extraordinary figures or objects. What is not clear is the deformed nature of a particular part of the frame. The framing, in its distended or deformed condition, represents or visualizes the aporetic nature of the superascetic, as someone of this world but who can no longer be contained because of his new status. A dual purpose is served by the distended architectural frame that includes negotiating the ascetic paradox: it 4.10 The Buddha under a “distended lintel,” here at the time of his first sermon, Gandhāra (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Daniel Slott, 1980.527.4).
118THE HERMIT’S HUT signifies the world and, at the same time, a transcendence of it. A shelter is represented that is simultaneously superseded by a superman. The lintel, like the uṣṇīṣa, is similar to a sign of the excessive nature of the enlightened human being, of his breaking forth from the boundedness he defines and defies. THE UṢṆĪṢA, THE SIGN OF A SUPERMAN Of the thirty-two lakkhaṇas of a mahāpuruṣa, the uṣṇīṣa, understood and depicted as a protuberance on the crown of the successful ascetic’s head, is the most significant one and with the richest symbolic content (figs. 4.13 and 4.14).15 The uṣṇīṣa, as mentioned in the context of the harmikā, signified a critical point of transition in the body, in the ascetic figure for the former and the stupa for the latter. Stella Kramrisch, in addition to a conceptual understanding, provided empirical and physiological evidence of such protuberances in meditating ascetics.16 What is particular about the uṣṇīṣa is that it is very much a specific human element but does not belong or occur to everyone; the uṣṇīṣa is a double-coded sign of being 4.11 The Buddha under a “distended lintel” with bodhisattvas in pavilions, Gandhāra (Foucher, L’art gréco-bouddhique, fig. 77). 4.12 The Buddha under a “distended lintel” in a domed pavilion, Gandhāra (drawing by Raphael Tran based on an image in Lolita Nehru, Origins of the Gandhāran Style [Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989]).
THE TWO HOUSES119 human and becoming superhuman. If the awakened ascetic is designated as an extraordinary human being, the physiological and iconographic emblem of that incredible attainment is the uṣṇīṣa. The uṣṇīṣa is, Kramrisch wrote, “an extension of the body-like appearance of the Buddha beyond its anthropomorphic limits.” This is what marks the Buddha as a lokottara, a being beyond the realm of this world. The uṣṇīṣa is conceptually an excess, and, whether it is produced in the body or represented on it, presents the sign of something alien to the normative human anatomy.17 As a cranial protuberance indicating the moment of an awakening, the uṣṇīṣa is approximated through a number of architectural and spatial metaphors that involve vertical egress or ascension in the “wheel of life.” The schematization of egress, and its counterpart, ingress, considers the latter as a horizontal condition akin 4.13 Head of the Buddha, Gandhāra, ca. fourth century (Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of MissouriColumbia). 4.14 The Buddha with a high, pointed uṣṇīṣa (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin).
120THE HERMIT’S HUT to birth and the former a vertical one representing a final liberation from the wheel. The theme of ingress and egress was theorized in both body and building terms in the preascetic Vedic period. Vedic texts provide numerous imageries of ascent along an invisible axis; a typical passage in the Rig Veda (IV.6.2–3) speaks of an invisible pillar where “Agni, even as it were a builder, hath lifted up on high his splendor, even as it were a builder his smoke, yea, beholdeth up the sky . . . a standard, as it were the pillar of sacrifice, firmly planted and duly chrismed.”18 The Vedic fire altar, fire temple, tree altar (bodhighara), and the potent ascetic all describe a structure that depends upon a theoretically constructed invisible and vertical axis. The post or pillar is unambiguously an architectonic device of ascent. In Vedic practices, it is present in the most important fire ritual, the agnicayana, in two ways: as an actual pillar, the yupa, which the sacrificer climbs at one stage, and a metaphorical one, the fire axis itself. A similar phenomenon of ascent characterizes the shamanic ritual of climbing a tree or post. Describing the matter of ascent as a widely practiced phenomenon of archaic humanity, Mircea Eliade noted that the “symbolism of the ecstatic ascent to heaven is a subspecies of the universally disseminated symbolism of magical flight.”19 Arriving at an ascetical climax, such as the cataclysmic one of breaking through the roof plate of the world or, more generally, as flight or climbing, attests to a gradual elevation on an axis or pillar. In valorizing ascent, there are clear kinships between certain Vedic and ascetic rituals. The Vedic sacrificial ritual involves the sacrificer climbing up the yupa, and in the case of the Buddhist arhats, “moving at will” and having the power of flight and rising up, in yet another case of architectural turbulence, to break through the roof of the house. There is a performative quality in such ritual activities. In the Vedic tradition, the sacrificial victim involved is also struck on the kūṭa (top of the skull), and in the case of ascetic funerary practice, the cranium of a deceased yogi is broken to allow the ascent of the breath of life. The narrative of flight or ascent is premised on the concept of an axis, which is increasingly considered in cosmological or metaphysical terms. For the seated ascetic in yogic āsana (posture), a mental pillar is constructed that rises to the skull roof. In the language of yogic science, the pillar corresponds to the vertebral column of the ascetic through which the psychophysiological energies progress. A Divyāvadāna text describes this as the chatrākāra-śirāh, literally, “head like an umbrella,” where the stick is the spine of the Universal Man (as well as the Axis of the Universe).20 “The umbrella or roof,” wrote Ananda Coomaraswamy, “[is] a scapular canopy of rays of light, provided with a central opening through which the supporting shaft (daṇḍa) passes, which shaft is analogically
THE TWO HOUSES121 the Axis of the Universe and central column of the cosmic ‘house,’ while the opening is analogically that of the brahma-randhra,sīmā, or vidṛti.”21 The brahma-randhra, the foramen of the human cranium, corresponds to the smoke hole or skylight of the traditional house.22 Stella Kramrisch located nirvāṇa physiologically in the region of the brahma-randhra.23 The funerary practice mentioned above is based on an axial arrangement involving burying ascetics (rather than cremating, as laypeople were) in a seated and upright position with the final act of cracking open the top part of the deceased’s skull to release the ascetic energy through the cranial foramen.24 Even though the construction of an axis and act of ascending are key concepts, they are not enough to explain the nature of ascetic achievements; what is more critical is the point where a momentous event happens in the axial corridor. There is an apex to the axis in both ascetical and architectural physiology, a point in the pillar where the kinetics of ascent is transformed into another dimension, where and when, as Eliade described, a “rupture of plane” occurs.25 Two morphological conditions depict that point of intersection: the śikharā (finial) in a building and the uṣṇīṣa in an ascetic. In order to represent the energetic nature of the intersection, the uṣṇīṣa was often depicted as a fiery protuberance (fig. 4.15) or a tree sprouting from the head of the Buddha (fig. 4.16). The phenomenon of a flame or tree indicates the final outcome of rechanneling the superascetic’s astounding internal energy, or téjas, into an inflammatory or incandescent sign. This is conveyed analogically in the notion of an effulgence emanating from the top of a stupa, represented for example in a relief from Amarāvatī (fig. 4.17). The intersection at the pillar is conceptualized through another cosmological theme, the “hole in the sky.” Both the concept of the pillar and idea of the sky hole derived from Vedic thinking, precede ascetic practices, and lend conceptual foundation to the latter. In the construction of the Vedic fire altar, made by layers of bricks, a key element is the placement of the naturally perforated brick (svayamātṛṇṇā) representing the sky set above viśvajyoti bricks representing the sun. Coomaraswamy interpreted the perforated brick as the skull of the Vedic celestial divinity Agni-Prajāpati, whose cosmic body was established in the fire ritual, making the eye in relation to the 4.15 Head of the Buddha with uṣṇīṣa indicating a flame, Thailand, fourteenth century (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore).
122THE HERMIT’S HUT skull or head, the sun. Three symbolic apparatuses—pillar, pin nacle or hole, and portal—are conflated in Vedic practices to construct a metaphysical system in which the sacrificer participates by a climbing action to pass through the portal toward his desired goal of immortality. Three different conditions, each with its own ritual and performative requirements, reenact the act of ascent: the sacrificial fire, the figure of the ascetic, and the physiognomy of the reified hut. The egress of fire in the setting of a hut can be seen as the societal and sacrificial ritual of the fire altar constructing a vertical axis. It also provides the analogical basis for the ascetic psychophysiological event of awakening and of the yogic exercise of reversing the somatic current into an upward movement, and its final, climactic moment as a cranial protuberance or hole. In the case of the dying man emerging through the hole in the roof, the hole is described as akin to a hole in a cart or chariot wheel, all being formed by rays. With the inference that a hole, ontologically speaking, cannot exist by itself, a structuralist conception unifies the pillar, hole, and canopy. It is the structural figure that presents the ascetic’s hut as a 4.16 The Buddha with uṣṇīṣa as an efflorescent tree, Orissa, eleventh century (Philip Rawson, Indian Sculpture [London: Vista, 1966], 64). 4.17 Relief depicting a stupa with canopylike emanations from the harmikā, Amarāvatī, ca. second century (The Huntington Archive, The Ohio State University).
THE TWO HOUSES123 mirror to the paranormal performance of vertical ascent in the meditating ascetic. FROM AGNI TO TĀPAS: THE CARNALIZATION OF FIRE The second point regarding the Buddha’s exclamation at nirvāṇa concerns how gaha, or home, is destroyed, and how the architect will never build it again. The evocation of gaha in the Dhammapada is dependent on a homology of body and building, but more important on the transportation of the trope of home from one site to another, from the literal to the corporeal. The use of the term gaha for body by the Buddha is particular and deliberate, making the striking turn in the verses a pointed ascetic deliberation on the future of home that refers to the normative notion of gaha prior to its cataclysmic termination, and its ascetic iteration that involves carrying the significance of home on the site of the ascetic’s body. Gaha (Skt. gṛhya), as has been indicated, was a key ethical, ritual, and spatial concept in Vedic society. While gaha denotes both a house and the spatial area of a household, it connotes a well-regulated structure of social and familial subjectivity in the Vedic world, defining who the Vedic social being was and what his obligations were (the privileged subject is a “he”). Gaha therefore is a conceptualization and construction of domesticity, with its implications of familial rootedness and continuity, ancestral fidelity, and the sacrosanct insularity of home. The deep significance of gaha is such that the performance of the domestic operations also upheld the structure of the larger universe, the macrocosmos. With the values of gaha, from the domestic to the cosmic, dependent on the crucial performance of rituals around the fire altar, agni describes in a pragmatic and concrete sense the significance of gaha. The gaha-structured world of the Vedic man provides one of the earliest instances of a body and building relationship in Indic history, something that predates the ascetic articulation of the sixth century BCE. In the late Vedic framework, the idea of sacrifice—a key element of that social structure—was based on a homology between builder (sacrificer) and the built object (altar). A fluid circulation of fire between the altar and the body is described in many texts and ritual manuals. The etymology of sārīra (body) in the Garbha Upaniṣad uses fiery references to body parts: the āhavanīya fire is like the mouth of the human body, whereas the gārhpatya fire is the abdomen.26 It is significant that the Buddha used gaha to redescribe the individuated body when he could have used a “self”-centered term such as ātman. But the Buddha stayed away from making any metaphysical or spiritual move and preferred a more socialized conception of the indi-
124THE HERMIT’S HUT vidual by using the term gaha. This is in alignment with how gaha emerges as the villainous protagonist in ascetic narratives that equate home with the most immediate sense of being-in-the-world. The home/ house is the primordial means of rootedness and, in Buddhist analysis, one of the principal foundations and causes for desire, whether biological or societal. It is craving in one form or another that generates the cycle of activities harbored in a dwelling—birth, life, and death. The Buddha identified the presence of being in this world with being in a dwelling, or being within a confined, enclosed, and defined space as gaha. No doubt a whole world of sociological, political, familial, and ritual dimensions is implicated in that sense of being in a gaha. The notion of nirvāṇa, for that matter, does not suggest just a moment of mystifying ecstasy to be understood in an individuated psychic plane but also coming to a clear and final understanding of how one is bound to the obligations of social and political gaha, how that is the root of all suffering, and how the new understanding really means a fundamental realignment of that relationship. The pairing of asceticism and renunciation conveys a socialized phenomenon in which asceticism begins with a prior condition of social emplacement embodied in the idea and practice of home. If the Vedic subject is defined by gaha-bound rituals and his obligations to gods and ancestors, the anti-gaha ascetic defines himself by rejecting those bonds and thereby creating his stunning independence. The rejection of home is not abstract, nor is it merely a simple walking out; the rebellion is carried out in a precise and semantically calculated way in which it means, in the clearest terms, the nullification of sacrificial fire, of refusing to carry out the set of elaborate rituals around it that define and maintain the foundations of home. Different ascetic groups take on different attitudes when it comes to the abandonment of fire. There were many Brahmanic ascetics who renounced the physically located home for a forest dwelling but carried the sacred fire with them. Home, from being an imperturbable, sited entity, becomes portable and siteless. Those ascetics were merely vanavāsis, or forest dwellers, and not yet saṃnyāsis, or true renouncers. But with many ascetics, particularly with the Buddhists, the rejection was categorical. Home and its fire were renounced outright in favor of entering the realm of full-fledged homelessness, or pabbaja. Fire seems to be literally and strategically the focus of the ascetic fury. But is the ascetic fully able to do away with the fire of home? At the pragmatic level, the ascetics may not constitute home in the sense of gaha, but they configure various kinds of dwellings and habitations as something instrumental for their ascetic performance. The singleminded focus of all ascetics is the labor-intensive process that is adopted and practiced within a somatic rigor in order to gradually gain greater
THE TWO HOUSES125 spiritual or psychic capabilities. Yoga generally describes a rigorous process that encompasses a variety of strenuous, meditative, contemplative, and mortificatory methods (even if they do not technically fall under the rubric of yoga). However they are named or described, the practice is about the technology of the body, and central to that is the generation and management of tāpas, understood as “body heat” or “inner heat.”27 Tāpas has a variegated meaning, from the natural heat of the sun to the ardor of ascetic practice, with its implication of śrama (labor). The word is derived from tap, “to give out heat,” “to make hot,” or “to be boiling.” In mythological and ritual literature, the strongest connection of tāpas is to any kind of ascetic activity, especially ritual “heating,” or ardor, gained through austerities and strenuous practices. The production and management of tāpas provide another term for the ascetic, tāpasvin. As much as it is rejected in the first round of ascetic renunciation, the sacred domestic fire seems to bind the two opposite paradigmatic figures of late Vedism—the householder and the ascetic—in a set of shared attributes. The concept of immortality is a common currency among both householders and ascetics; both groups wish for a state that is, in the language of ascetic doctrines, beyond “the fetters of the world.” Where the householder wishes to achieve immortality through the fire rituals and by perpetuating progenies, the ascetic wants to be free from the cycle of saṃsāra and gain that desirable state by detachment and a new consciousness. While the householder invokes the god Agni in his fire-focused rituals, the ascetic harnesses “inner heat” in his laborious practices. There is already in Vedic discourse, most evident in Upaniṣadic texts, an attempt to correlate the structure of ritual sacrifice with that of the ascetic project. Whereas the ascetic may be undergoing a psychophysiological reconstitution of self through his ascesis, that act is also interpreted as incorporating the powers of ritual sacrifice. The idea of atmayājña, or inner or self-sacrifice, is already present in the main forest philosophies of the late Upaniṣads and Āraṇyakas,28 the later Vedic ideology that represents a turn toward introspection and meditational performance carried out by forest sages and ascetics. The ritual manual of Baudhāyana makes it clear by asking rhetorically, “Where is the sacrifice?” The answer that is given is, “In man.”29 The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa narrates how the āsuras (titans) set up their sacrificial fires externally, that is, in a profane manner, and how the devas (gods) “set up that Fire in their inward self, and having done so became immortal and invincible and overcame their mortal and invincible foes.”30 In a similar way, the human sacrificer sets up the sacrificial fire within him-
126THE HERMIT’S HUT self and utters, “Surely, as long as I live, that Fire has been set up in my inward self does not die down in me.” The Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad (II.5) describes how the breathings in and out correspond to the “Interior Burnt-Offering” (āntaraṃ agnihotraṃ), or what the Sankhyāna Āraṇyaka calls the “Subjective Interior Burnt-offering” (ādhyātmikaṃ antaraṃ agnihotrah).31 The Maitri Upaniṣad (VI.10) sees the individual who comprehends an equation between soma and bhutātman as a saṃnyāsin, yogi, and ātmayājī (self-sacrificer).32 These late Vedic texts consolidate the idea of a comprehending human who is exhorted by self-introspection to foreground questions of an existential, individual nature. The con cept of atmayājña is crucial for understanding the reterritorializing of the sacred fire with the ascetic as the agency and its new location. The result of this introspective movement is a complex transformation of the Vedic paradigm of domestic sacrifice and its methodical incorporation into the body of the self-sacrificer. On the one hand, the sacred fire burning at the ritual center of the Vedic home is rejected by the ascetic and, on the other, the symbolic structure of that fire is transferred to the psychosomatic paradigm of tāpas. The ascetic rejection of fire, both as domestic centeredness and a terrestrial-cosmic axis, is translated and translocated into a nonterritorial but so matic tāpas in a process that Eliade described as “interiorizing the sacrifice.”33 The interiorization or incorporation of the structure of sacrificial fire also implies the carnalization of home. This is an important clue for understanding the relocated address of home, from the territorial to the corporeal. If in the mainstream Vedic context the sacred fire demarcates and describes home/house, the late Vedic ascetic circumvents that paradigm by reappropriating it in a new conceptualization in which he himself is the locus. Perhaps the project of interiorization as articulated by Upaniṣadic authors was a clever device intended to Aryanize what initially appeared to be a radical ascetic rejection of Vedic ideology. This has been noted by writers like Dutt and Eliade, by whom the inner sacrifice is seen as an innovation that allowed even the most rebellious ascetic and eccentric mystic to remain in the fold of Brahmanism.34 The late Vedic conceptualization was also echoed in the thoughts of the Buddha. Assuming that many of the comments ascribed to the Buddha may have been later interjections, the Buddha is found commenting that he does not teach a new doctrine but follows an ancient way: “I pile no wood for fire altars; I kindle a flame within me, the heart of the hearth, the flame therein the dominated self.”35 The role of fire is interpreted in a mutually imbricated way for both gṛhysṭa (householder) and saṃnyās (renouncer) practices. Both sacrificial operations—whether domestic or ascetic—are about the creation of
THE TWO HOUSES127 a new man, a human subject transformed from a baser state to a developed one. Both Vedic sacrifice and ascetic method summon the concept of ascent, from earth to sky for the yājña fire sacrificer and from base to cranium in the ascetic body, and a final meaningful release or egress through an orifice (khā, “roof hole,” or cranial gap). Through the mechanism of ascent and release, the sacrificer—householder or ascetic— theoretically attains a new body. This compelling transformative process is described in late Vedic texts in terms of the sacrificer “dying” and being reborn as a new man. “A man is unborn as he does not sacrifice,” says the Jaiminīya Upaniṣad Brāhmaṇa.36 “To sacrifice is to be born,” announces the Kauṣitakī Brāhmaṇa (XV.3). The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa (XI.2.6.13) declares, the selfsacrificer is “one who knows, ‘this (new) body of mine hath been integrated (saṃskrīyata), hath been superimposed (upa dhīyate) by that body (of the Sacrifice).” The Buddhist Suttavibhaṅga mentions a parable in which the Buddha uses the example of a chick breaking out of its eggshell as a “second birth.” Mircea Eliade saw this as an explication of transcending space and time: “To break the shell of the egg is equivalent, in the parable of the Buddha, to breaking out of the saṃsāra, out of the wheel of existence—that is, to the transcending both of Cosmic space and cyclic Time.”37 Vivaṭa-cchado, the cataclysmic end to the body-hut that is often used as an epithet for the Buddha,38 describes not only a climactic conclusion but a catalytic beginning that confirms the ascetic goal: the production of a new man. THE LAST BODY, A NEW SELF It is clear that home is not rejected by the ascetics in a simple, categorical way even if the rhetoric and provocations make it seem so. After the various implements of home have been forsaken, the sacred fire of home is the last bastion that the ascetic must reckon with. The ritual fire is first carnalized or incorporated, that is, taken up within the parameters of the body, but that is also not enough for the ascetic. What must be done once and for all is to destroy the last vestige of gaha, and that is what leads Siddhārtha to take a seat under the fig tree in Uruvelā. From the Buddha’s perspective, the body as a hut/house is not something to be either adored or vilified; it is to be regarded as the final but necessary frontier on the ascetic journey toward its ultimate metamorphosis. The “last hut” presents the most compelling imagery of the critical battles of the renouncer with the vestiges of civilization, ranging from the pragmatic issue of shelter to the purely mental efforts of the ascetic to liberate himself. The idea of a last hut-body represents the essential
128THE HERMIT’S HUT principle of Indian/Buddhist asceticism, its labor-intensive process of śrama, and its enigmatic terminal goal in nirvāṇa or mukti (liberation). When the body is conceived of as a hut, it is held up as a badge of the conditioned life. The sense of a last hut-body is encoded at different levels of the ascetic praxis and corresponds to different stages of termination. The basic sense of the last hut begins with gaha, the homely life. In this context, the last hut is the familial and socialized dwelling that must be renounced before ascetic homelessness can begin. From this pragmatic and foundational perspective, the last hut could be seen as initiating the process of dismantling the source of being-in-theworld in its most literal and putative senses. Ascetic technology is built up toward a full renunciation, including the annihilation of the symbolic structure spawned by the pragmatics of home. Having renounced gaha, the novitiate-ascetic is not completely freed from the need for lodging or dwelling, even if that means being in a natural cave, under a tree, or on a tuft of grass. What follows is a conceptual struggle between the complete abandonment of home and a fundamental need for dwelling. There are two concurrent themes in the story of body and building. One is the mirrored relation between the two, and the other is the destination charted out in the ascetic journey. The narrative of body and building, as far as the ascetic discourse is involved, delineates a curious condition of twinness in which the two morphologically and systemically distinct subjects are paired with varying degree of mutuality; sometimes they are simply juxtaposed for reasons of contingency or convenience, at other times they may stand apart but suggest various shades of covalence, from spatial closeness to analogical overlap, and yet at times they integrate and literally become indistinguishable from each other (fig. I.15). The ritual burial of a monk, in some particular practices, in which the ashes of a deceased and cremated monk are mixed with stone, mortar, and lime in order to construct small stupas, presents a literal bodily and material fusion.39 Considering the chain of the bodybuilding axiom, from material framing to different degrees of intertwining, the final interment of the ascetic in the body of the stupa, in its material and molecular integration, is a literal demonstration of a last hut-body.
129 CHAPTER 5 Asceticism and the Primitive Hut The Barabar Hills, about 24 kilometers north of present-day Gaya, is the site of a group of caves that were “excavated” around 250 BCE at the time of Emperor Aśoka for the Ājīvika sect of ascetics.1 The excavation led to “constructions” or carvings, of which the most significant cave in the group is the Lomas Rishi. A striking feature of the interior of the cave is a three-dimensional “hut” carved from stone; it’s not quite clear whether this hut form itself is a cult object or a shrine shaped as a hut (fig. 5.1). What is also not evident, even if it is a shrine, is what the appearance of a crude rock-hewn hut signifies. To add to the enigma, the exterior of the cave presents another story (fig. 5.2). A compressed profile of a building is chiseled at the mouth of the cave as an ostensible gateway; the details represent elements of an elaborate house that one might have seen in the towns and settlements of that period. In comparing the two represented buildings in a single spatial context, a primitive feature can be assigned to the hut inside the cave and a cultivated quality to the building at the entrance. It is this counterpoising of a primitive hut set deep inside a cavernous space with an elaborate structure at the exterior entrance that conveys the distinctiveness of Lomas Rishi. The juxtaposition of elaboration and simplicity arises in a deliberate manner within the rhetorical and semantic prerogatives of asceticism. Whenever such a constructed coupling is encountered—a coincidence that is actually more than the sum of the two—it presents a dialectic between what is taken to be the normative and what is considered primitive. What is premised and valorized in that relationship is an idea of the primitive, of what is either prior to or distinct from a predominant cultural norm. The valorization of the primitive is not new to Indian
5.1 Interior of Lomas Rishi Cave, Barabar Hills, Gaya, ca. third century BCE (photo by Tim Makins). 5.2 Exterior of Lomas Rishi Cave, Barabar Hills, Gaya, ca. third century BCE (photo by Tim Makins).
ASCETICISM AND THE PRIMITIVE HUT131 asceticism: from the earliest literary evidence of the Vedic keśin, described as a wild-haired, flying creature, to contemporary sādhus, a primitive profile seems to be the most effective way to display dissent and distance from mainstream social practices. A constructed or construed primitiveness, inherent in the basic compulsions of almost all ascetic and renunciatory practices, proposes and deliberately adopts some kind of method, manner, or mechanism that can be described, in reference to an originary point of renunciation, as being primitive. The first or primary task in the ascetic path is the abandonment of the accoutrements of civilization and, at the same time, the adoption of conditions that are considered, in comparison with what has been forsaken, as primitive, elemental, or wild. No other image of the individual human signifies this better than Siddhārtha in his emaciated condition during his bout with an extreme form of ascetic practice; the figure suggests not only a refusal of material artifacts such as clothing and other social accessories but also a denial of excess with maintaining a physiologically and culturally normative body (figs. 5.3 and 5.4). With renunciation being a foundational act in asceticism, it is inherently evident that there must be something to renounce as a point of departure, something that is preexisting and given. The abandonment of social normativity is simultaneous with appropriating what that society at a particular time considers as a primitive mode, thus making ascetic signification a referential or relativistic condition. It is not an insignificant matter that Siddhārtha, in his sequence of abandoning the markers of his princely privileges gives up his horse, shears off his hair, and dons a used and tattered outfit (fig. 5.5). The image and practice of taking on a primitive garb is too well known in Indian literature and history: the quasi asceticism of Rāma and his family on their journey to the forest, multitudes of ascetics in their crude habitats, and godly beings such as Śiva in wild and ashsmeared features represent a methodical acceptance and presentation of the socially anormative. The terms “primitive” and “primitivism” are highly protean ideas and not reducible to any single condition. The primitive suggests the notion of the savage, the barbarian, the first, the underdeveloped, the “natural,” and the 5.3 The emaciated Siddhārtha, Gandhāra (from the exhibition The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan, 2011, Asia Society, New York; photo by author).
132THE HERMIT’S HUT differentiated “other,” each characterization posing a relativism, something that is clearly differ ent from a practiced standard or norm. The positing of such a duality is fraught with vexing questions around what is that norm and who articulates that norm,2 especially evident in the ideological claim inherent in that relativism of what is superior and civilized. This is the basis of much modern consternation about power and the hegemonic relationships between societal groups where this dualistic formulation is applied. Despite the complexity of the primitive and primitivism, and varieties of position regarding what they mean, both are highly pertinent themes in framing the ascetic and his space. While the adoption of the terms primitive and primitivistic suggests an operational distinction between the two, the difference is blurry. An immediate difference between the two may be seen as one of actuality and idealization, between considering “what it is” in terms of the primitive and a strategy of intentional adaptation of the primitivistic. The actual primitive methods (of people who are in it and are largely unselfconscious of it) could refer to, for example, the art, ritual, and social practices of a so-called primitive people, whereas primitivism implies the deliberate deployment of some kind of aesthetical, ideological, or philosophical theme in reference to that primitive mode. Primitivism, or the conscious choice of primitivistic practices, is a prerogative of a developed and literate society, drawing catalytically from what it perceives as or projects to be primitive.3 This is possible in a social and cultural imagination that has already conceptualized a historical movement from one social condition to another, made possible also by a capacity for self-visualization and self-reflection. Primitivism is a cultural production, making its outputs ideological and value-laden. An endemic character of constructed primitivism is imagining or romanticizing the primitive as “pure,” as a condition that harbors the original unity of humanity and nature, or at least as something different from a present situation of deterioration and contamination of that perceived unity. It is the imagination of a differentia that presents a correspondence between asceticism and primitivism and introduces a utopian element in ascetic thinking. Primitivist imagination contains a utopian content if utopia, as “no place” in the general definition of the term, means a place or condition that is existing tantalizingly at the edge of possibility, somewhere just beyond the realms of present real5.4 Head of the fasting Buddha, Gandhāra (© The Trustees of the British Museum, London).
ASCETICISM AND THE PRIMITIVE HUT133 ity and normativity. What is proposed or imagined as the possible future is a condition akin to some mythic Golden Age, the time of beginnings or prior happenings when humanity is imagined to have lived in a state of happiness and fulfillment and without the complexities and contradictions of socialization. The ascetics see the value of utopia not in relation to a present condition but to a possible future that is also actualizable through the ascetic process. Considering that the arrival at utopia is forever thwarted, but making utopia appealing exactly for that reason, the introduction of a utopian element in the ascetic imagination revises the nature of the trajectory by conceiving the ascetic telos as utopia actualized. If primitiveness persists as a primary characterization of the hermit’s hut, we are obligated to look at all the dwellers within and ask who these people are who are inhabiting such structures. One could say “primitive” peoples, that is, those who are designated as such from the vantage point of a differentially developed group; this latter group sets up a naturalized binary by being located almost always outside the primitive circle. For such primitive peoples, primitiveness is a lived condition of which they are not particularly self-conscious and for which they find themselves as subjects of anthropological and proselytizing interventions. For a development of primitiveness from within, one where a differential is constructed from an internal cultural discourse, it is not so much a progression from one level to another as a setting up of one norm against another. The setting up is often visualized and dramatized by relocating to the foreground what may lie at the edge or fringe. People inhabiting the societal fringe, such as escapees, refugees, or renegades, who may have been members of an urban or communal culture have now opted, for various reasons, for an isolated, marginal, and self-absorbed existence. “Fringe” implies a locational relativity, both in terms of the physical site of habitation and the social position of its dweller in relation to the larger societal milieu. The range and consequence of dwelling at the social periphery and adopting a primitivist condition are quite diverse. Such dwellings that have adopted a primitive structure and appearance as a common de5.5 Scene of the Buddha’s tonsure, Pagan, eleventh century (William Cohn, Buddha in der Kunst des Ostens [Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1925], 73).
134THE HERMIT’S HUT nominator cover a varied ground, from habitations that are voluntary or involuntary and situations that are permanent or provisional but, in all cases, mark measures of a spatial relationship with a “mainstream” society. For such groups as shamans, witch doctors, and others of a similar category, who tend to live an isolated life, the relationship with community is one of mutual benefit. For some who have become disillusioned by normative society and refuse to partake in the communal life, the relocation may have been generated by antipathy or disillusionment. There are others who have had to develop a refuge from mainstream society after an infringement of societal rules or obligations. The fictional Robinson Crusoe’s refuge on an island is both involuntary and temporary (although based on the actual figure of Alexander Selkirk marooned on an island off the coast of Chile in 1704), Henry David Thoreau’s cabin at Walden is voluntary and temporary, the huts of Kamo no Chōmei and the many recluses from the medieval courts of Kyoto are voluntary and permanent, and in some cases mobile.4 The hermit’s hut is similarly a dwelling at the social fringe and presents its undeniable and contrived coarseness as a badge of honor. Like other figures on the social fringe, the hermit-ascetic defines a certain kind of cultivated estrangement and alienation but as prerequisites for a larger goal. The ascetic hut is inhabited by a very particular dweller who, not unlike the escapee or renegade, is more or less a solitary and self-absorbed creature but operating from and within a more defined and clearer sense of ideology, intellection, and purpose. The ascetic has a project: the plan to transform himself. That is the key difference from the various groups of people harboring a primitivist ethos. Being an extra-societal being, as one on the fringe of society, is an interim stage for becoming an extraordinary figure. THE PARADIGM OF THE PRIMITIVE The construed primitivism presented at Lomas Rishi brings the relativist program of asceticism to the foreground; it makes the ideological distance from normative society visible and concrete. Broadly speaking, the relativism can be chronological or synchronic. George Boas, in his study of primitivism, presents two major positions that situate primitivism in a chronological scheme:5 The first posits the idea of an original primordial condition as being beatific and perfect, and the rest, or what follows, as gradual deterioration, or in the Judeo-Christian tradition, part of the “Fall.” The second idea sees the original condition as being naïve, innocent, and uncultivated and then leading to a sequence of gradual progress and increasing complexity.
ASCETICISM AND THE PRIMITIVE HUT135 Indic ascetic narratives have made prolific conceptualizations of the primitive. The valorizing of primitive methods and mannerisms in ancient India points to a deeply embedded relationship between asceticism and primitivism, something that is witnessed from the Vedic keśin to the ascetic Śiva. The Vedas describe the keśin as a “wild figure,” someone who is naked, clad in “brown filth,” wears long hair, and “follows the track of the Apsarāses, Gāndharvas, and wild beasts, and understands their thoughts”;6 certain deities are also described in the manner of the keśin. The “track” represents the forest or the wild, a space that is clearly outside the realm of the socialized or civilized. The keśin may actually have been a shaman and not an ascetic, but the factor of an asocial being with a charismatic character is already established in the social imagination in the early Vedic period. A fourth-century Brahmanical text, the Vaikhānasa Smārtasūtra, a compilation of a long line of reflection on the topic, mentions hermits who are naked or wear torn clothing or tree bark and inhabit graveyards and feed on urine and cow dung.7 The god Śiva in his ascetic form is the wildest of all. In the Dandaka forest episode, he roams the wild forest in a bizarre, unkempt manner, with his body smeared with ashes and exhibiting an erect phallus. Rudra, as an earlier version of Śiva, lives in forests and jungles and is called the Lord of Wild Beasts.8 “He is excluded,” as Mircea Eliade pointed out, “from the soma sacrifice and receives only offerings of food thrown on the ground.”9 Such deliberate wildness or intentional primitivity is the prerogative of most ascetic groups and was established as an ascetic theme much before Buddhism. The Jaina digambara ascetics, who went naked, considering the sky as their garment, represent a more semiotically articulated expression of primitiveness than the wild behavior of some of their contemporaries. The Buddha experienced forms of extremism in the early phase of his ascetic practices, as evident in his emaciated condition, but moved away from such deliberate displays. The Buddhists were particular about appearances and distanced themselves from the flagrantly wild demeanors of their ascetic compatriots, especially the Brahmanics, preferring to engage in a more careful expression of the primitive project. Whether in biblical narratives glorifying the powers of the “first” human or Vedic texts extolling the virtues of the “natural” man, nakedness and homelessness seem to be abiding characteristics of such paradigmatic figures. The idea of the original primordial condition as beatific and perfect was embodied in the figure of Adam in his paradisal dwelling. Adam, the first man in the Judeo-Christian narrative, becomes the model primitive, the “superior original.” The “superior” quality of the first human was characterized by his nakedness and childlike inno-
136THE HERMIT’S HUT cence.10 Genesis describes the union of the first couple in being “naked.”11 In the interpretation of the first-century Jewish philosopher Philo, the nakedness of Adam and Eve means the complete absence of vice and virtue. Adam and Eve were originally like infants—unthinking thought and unperceiving sense, or “unexercised potencies.”12 Since the primal is considered superior to that which comes after it, it must be better to be like an infant than to be like an adult. In brief, the first human is always perfect because he has divine origin, while the “children of Adam must be worse than their father, for they are born of men,” with each generation receiving “ever dimmer forms and powers.”13 In synchronic relativism, on the other hand, a condition of temporal simultaneity of the normative and primitive, a contrast is played out with the former simply being better and superior and the primitive lowly and ungainly, an attitude that can be found in the narratives of most literate societies, in either an imperialist or a racist discourse or a combination of both. The notion of the primitive as inferior to and less civilized than a referred society is present in Vedic-Aryanic history, especially in the relationship between Aryanic and non-Aryanic cultures. While this is beyond the scope of this study, the divisive political application of the primitive can be seen in such derogatory Vedic-Aryanic notions such as āsura, dasyu, or mleccha, terms that refer to some kind of demonic or vile being.14 In almost all cases, the terms were reserved for non-Aryanic peoples outside the Aryanic fold. And yet it is in that context that Vedic sages and hermits adopted the primitive paradigm. With early Christianity, the primitivist standpoint of admiring the simple and hard life finds its most compelling model in the Christ. This was later to be idealized in the lives of the “Desert Fathers,” the early Christian ascetics of Egypt. The early Christians held three models of the ideal primitive: Christ himself, Adam, and the “noble savage,” that is, imaginary or real people and tribes outside the Christian pale. The idea of the noble savage, the term being coined in the con text of eighteenth-century Romanticism, can be traced back to the Christian encounter with non-Christian peoples. With the early Christian glorification of the primitive in the figure of Adam or the life experienced and practiced by Christ, the noble savage posed a dilemma.15 How was one to consider people who lived the imitable life and yet were not touched by the Judeo-Christian tradition or, more precisely, the divine wisdom? So, not unlike the status of the yakṣa, the tree spirit, in Buddhist and Brahmanical interpretations, or the indigenous peoples the arriving Vedic tribes overran in India, the “savage,” in the eyes of Latin and Greek writers, could appear cruel and barbarous and yet admirable. There is always an ambivalent charisma and appeal around the primitive that percolates even into the figuration of the ascetic.