The fate of the Buddha’s
begging bowl
November 17, 2017, Bhante
Dhammika The Island
One of the most revered
relics in the ancient Buddhist world was the Buddha’s begging bowl.
A rough outline of its long convoluted history is this – it was
supposedly given to the people of Vesali by the Buddha when he
passed through the city on his way to Kusinara. In the 1st/2nd
century King Kanishka took it to Pushapura, now Peshawar, where a
string of Chinese pilgrims reported seeing it between the 3rd and
the 9th centuries. The importance of the bowl is attested by
numerous depictions of it in Gandhara art, usually shown on the
pedestal of Buddha statues. During the Islamic period it was taken
from one palace or mosque to another until at a date unknown it
ended up in Sultan Way’s Baba’s shrine on the outskirts of Kandahar
Afghanistan. Several British officers report seeing it there in the
19th century, one attempting to translate the inscription on it,
and another, Alexander Cunningham, trying to trace its history, a
fact I mention in my Middle Land Middle Way (1992, p.136). In the
late 1980s during Afghanistan’s civil war President Najibullah had
the bowl taken to Kabul’s National Museum. When the Taliban came to
power, their Minister of Culture ordered all Buddhist artefacts in
the museum smashed although the bowl remained undamaged, no doubt
because of the Quranic verses inscribed on its outer surface. Today
it can still be seen in the museum.
The bowl is not small. It
is a stone hemispherical vessel of greenish-grey granite with a
diameter of about 1.75 meters, a height of about three ¾ of a
meter, and a thickness of about 18 cm at its rim, rather thicker
elsewhere particularly at its middle and the base. It has no cracks
or abrasions, except for a portion about the size of the palm of
one’s hand that has flaked away from near the rim. There is a
delicate lotus petal design chiselled around its base, attesting to
its Buddhist past, and inscribed in beautiful large calligraphic
script horizontally along the rim of the bowl, are six rows of
verses from the Quran, reflecting its Islamic continuum and its
status through the ages as an object of special religious interest.
Traces of similar calligraphic script are visible on the surface on
the inner side of the bowl. The bowl is about 350 to 400 kg in
weigh, far too heavy to lift.
This bowl was probably an
early larger copy of the Buddha’s actual bowl placed in a monastery
in Vesali for people to offer their first fruits in, a custom
common in ancient India and which survived even in Sri Lanka and
elsewhere up to the 19th century. The bowl’s great size may well
have encouraged the acceptance of the widespread belief amongst
ancient Buddhists that the Buddha was 18 feet tall. Only someone
that big could have used or even lifted a bowl this
size.
It is interesting to keep
in mind that Sri Lanka claimed to have the Buddha’s begging bowl,
although any legend of how it got to the island has not been
preserved. This Sri Lankan relic is mentioned several times in the
Culavamsa as being as precious and holy as the Tooth Relic. The
chronical tells us for instance, that when King Manabharana moved
from Rohana to Polonnaruva he brought the Tooth Relic and the Bowl
Relic with him. It also gives us a description of an elaborate
ceremony during the reign of Parakramabahu I in which the two
relics were drawn through the streets of the capital in a wheeled
pavilion made of gold. Sometime after the fall of Polonnaruva the
Bowl Relic disappeared and was forgotten
I am writing about the
Buddha’s begging bowl because after being in obscurity for so long
it recently hit the headlines in India when it was mentioned in the
Lok Sabha, India’s parliament. I reproduce below from the Ministry
of External Affairs website. "MP Dr. Raghuvansh Prasad Singh asked;
‘Will the Minister of External Affairs be pleased to state: (a)
whether the Government has recently got the information that the
begging bowl of Buddha, given to the people of Vesali by him, has
been found in the Kabul museum; (b) if so, the details thereof; (c)
whether the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan has sent a photo of the
said bowl to the Government; (d) if so, the details thereof; (e)
whether the Government has initiated the process to recover the
said bowl; (f) if so, the details thereof; (g) whether the
travelogues of the Chinese pilgrim Faxian and the writings of Dr.
Cunningham and Shri S.V. Sahni mention the said bowl; and (h) if
so, the details thereof?’."
The Minister Prenteet Kaur
in reply answered; "The Embassy of India, Kabul has made enquiries
in the matter. It is learnt that the item purported to be Lord
Buddha’s begging bowl was apparently in Kandahar until the regime
of former President Najibullah. It was later brought to Kabul and
is currently in the Kabul Museum. It has been pointed out that the
begging bowl, a photo of which our Embassy has obtained, is rather
large, besides having inscription in Arabic and Persian, thus
calling into question its provenance. The Archaeological Survey of
India has been requested to convey any information or advice it may
have regarding the provenance of the bowl currently in Kabul
Museum."