Chennai: Tamil Nadu’s Buddhist history hasn’t got much attention from mainstream historians. But a new paper maps the widespread travels of a 16th-century Buddhist yogi from Rameswaram. He set out from Tamil Nadu but went as far as Zanzibar in the west and Macau in the east—a testimony to the long life and sway of Indian Buddhism.
Not much is known about the Tamil Buddhist yogi Buddhaguptanatha. But now a Queensland University scholar, Iain Sinclair, has carefully parsed through the sole biography of the yogi to construct and map his travels.
Since there are not many records about Buddhist yogis, particularly in South India, Buddhaguptanatha may have been the first Tamil Buddhist to travel this widely, said 63-year-old independent Buddhist researcher Sampath from Namakkal district.
“Buddhaguptanatha’s life provides evidence that Buddhism, specifically its tantric and siddha traditions, persisted in India well into the 17th century, challenging the narrative that Buddhism was completely eradicated from the Indian subcontinent by the 12th century,” he added.
The eighth son in a merchant family in a town near Rameswaram, the Buddhist yogi was called Buddhanatha in his childhood. After joining a local group of yogis following the tradition of Goraksanatha, he travelled to various pilgrimage spots in North India before beginning his maritime journey, according to the hagiography written by Taranatha.
“Thirty per cent or so of the Hagiography is taken up with the yogi’s maritime journeys. This phase of his life lasted at least eight years. During this period he receives the initiations of Cakrasaṃvara and Hevajra and meets his final guru, the accomplished Buddhist yogi Śāntigupta, who bestows the initiatory name Buddhaguptanātha,” Sinclair wrote in his paper, The Indian Ocean Itinerary of Buddhaguptanatha’s Namthar.
The only book about the yogi so far was written by a Tibetan Buddhist leader, Taranatha, who was his disciple. A student at the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, Sinclair used the text as the source material to document the spectacular outreach of Tamil Buddhist teachings.
While the hagiography of Taranatha was available in Tibetan history, the subsequent translations and research on Buddhaguptanatha weren’t available in the public domain and were largely circulated only among researchers and academics. This is the first work of research about the Tamil yogi that has been published.
The paper reveals that Buddhaguptanatha recounted his experiences to Taranatha sometime in 1590, after returning from his travels.
His India travels started from the Konkan Coast of present–day Goa in 1570, ending at the coast of Amaravati in present–day Andhra Pradesh in 1585.
Although there are no traces of yogi Buddhaguptanatha in Tamil Nadu today, historians and writers told ThePrint that remnants of Buddhism are found in almost all regions of the state.
An archaeologist who works in Tamil Nadu’s archaeology department said that Buddhist artefacts were also found in Rameswaram.
“Buddha statues belonging to the 16th-17th century have been retrieved in the past in Tiruvadanai, a small town near Rameswaram. It could possibly represent the influence Buddhaguptanatha had in those times. However, there are no specific details we have found so far about one particular yogi like Buddhaguptanatha,” said the archaeologist, who did not want to be named.
Tamil Nadu Buddhist Sanga Council’s Chief Coordinator Gowtham Sanna notes that it was rare to find mention of Tamil yogis and their Buddhist followers in history.
“Even the history of Iyothee Thass Pandithar, an anti-caste activist who embraced Buddhism and was a siddha practitioner, came to public discourse only about 20 years ago. It is very rare to find the history of the individual Buddhist yogis like Buddhaguptanatha,” he said.
Travels of the Tamil Buddhist yogi
After travelling to various parts of South Asia, Buddhaguptanatha visited Tibet in the 1590s, where he met Taranatha.
In Taranatha’s biography, Buddhaguptanatha began his journey from Goa to an island named “São Lourenço”. Sinclair, however, could not figure out the first location he reached after leaving Goa because of discrepancies in the route and the religious communities described in the biography.
From São Lourenço, Buddhaguptanatha travelled to the Śankhadvipa, which Sinclair tentatively identifies as Socotra island in present–day Yemen, based on geographical features and historical trade routes.
“Socotra had long been a destination for Indian mariners, although it had fallen well within the Arabic cultural sphere by the sixteenth century. The island’s coastline can be compared to the shape of a conch shell with the shell’s apex aligned to the island’s eastern tip. Although other islands in the Indian Ocean could also be said to have roughly conch-shaped coastlines, the account of the Hagiography offers additional details that match up with Socotra,” he wrote.
From Socotra, the yogi is believed to have travelled to one of the islands in the Maldives. In the hagiography, the location is called Patala. However, there are some uncertainties. Although it was once practised in the Maldives, Buddhism had long subsided into sandy ruins by the time of Buddhaguptanatha’s visit.
The Tamil Buddhist yogi’s next destination is the more certain part of his journey—reaching Sri Lanka via Maldives.
According to Sinclair, the hagiography reaches firmer ground when Buddhaguptanatha visits Sri Lanka. The yogi describes the island’s natural beauty, thriving Buddhist community, and visits to sites such as Adam’s Peak, where he is said to have had a king as his audience.
“The name of the king is recorded by Taranatha as rā he shing kha bhan ḍa ri, namely, Rajasinghe I, formerly Tikiri Bandara. He was on the throne at Kandy from 1581 (or in effect from 1578, according to the Portuguese) to 1592. Buddhaguptanātha’s five-year sojourn in Sri Lanka would then have started in 1573 at the earliest and ended no later than 1587,” Sinclair wrote in his paper.
After spending five years in Sri Lanka, Buddhaguptanatha began his journey to Pulau Lingga in present–day Indonesia, later heading to Macau in present–day China. After that, he went to Zanzibar or the Comoro Islands in present–day East Africa.
Although the reconstruction of the Buddhaguptanatha’s journey is solely based on Taranatha’s account, Sinclair said Taranatha’s narration was unreliable at times.
In Taranatha’s account, Buddhaguptanatha’s visit to Sri Lanka includes a story of the yogi meeting a 700-year-old monk called Yaśākaraśānti in a cave in Kandy.
“Although the tale of Yaśākaraśanti has no direct bearing on the reconstruction of the itinerary, it represents a clear case of unreliable narration,” Sinclair said in his report.
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Buddhism and Tamil Nadu
Although Buddhism is not widely practised in Tamil Nadu today, remnants of its past can be found in the form of ancient statues excavated from Buddhist sites such as Peruncheri in Nagapattinam.
According to writer Stalin Rajangam, a Buddhist vihara was functioning in the present–day Nagapattinam district until the 20th century.
“There was a Vihar named Sudamani Vihar in present-day Nagapattinam district. We do have the photo evidence of that Vihar in the book titled Buddhism and Tamil written by Mayilai Seeni Vankatasamy,” Stalin said.
According to the history of Nagapattinam published by the district collectorate, Pallava King Rajasimha permitted a Chinese king to build a Buddhist vihara in Nagapattinam district. This was called the Sudamani Vihar and the dilapidated Buddhist tower near it was razed down 200 years ago.
Tamil Nadu’s Department of Archaeology unearthed more than 300 Buddha statues at Vellipalayam in Nagapattinam, which were later shifted to the Government Museum in Chennai.
Stalin said that the association of Buddhism and Tamils is not only a matter of the past. “Even today, monks from various countries visit the Buddhist sites in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry,” he said. The Buddhist vihara at Thiyaganur village in Thalaivasal of Salem district is one of the prominent ones in Tamil Nadu, he added.
Writer Shalin Maria Lawrence, who is penning her book on the prevalence of various forms of Buddhism in Tamil Nadu, said that people in the state once followed tantric Buddhism—believed to have been followed by Buddhaguptanatha as well.
She also puts the association of Tamils and Buddhism to the times when the five great epics of Tamil were written.
“Of the five great Tamil epics (Aimperum Kappiyangal), Manimekalai is about the history of Tamils’ association with Buddhism. It is thought to have been written between the 5th century and the 10th century. The practice should have been there much before it was written,” she said.
In the epic, Manimekalai is the daughter of Kovalan and Madhavi who embraces Buddhism after being impressed by the teachings of equality.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)