Sarnath
Sarnath is a town northeast of Varanasi, in Uttar Pradesh, India. As the Lalitavistara sutra states, the Gautama Buddha chose "Deer Park by the Hill of the Fallen Sages, outside of Varanasi" for his first teaching after he attained enlightenment in Bodh Gaya. The teaching is entitled Dhammacakkappavattana sutra. Sarnath is one of the eight most important pilgrimage sites for Buddhists, and has been nominated to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Sarnath is where Gautama Buddha's sangha first convened, when he gave the first teaching to his original five disciples Kaundinya, Assaji, Bhaddiya, Vappa and Mahanama, known as The First Turning of the Wheel of Dharma. This teaching occurred circa 528 BCE when the Buddha was approximately 35 years of age.
The buddha before Gautama Buddha is Kassapa Buddha, who was born in Sarnath to where he returned and joined his sangha of men and women in order to give his first teaching.
Several sources state that the name Sarnath is derived from Saranganath, which translates to 'Lord of the Deer'. According to Buddhist history, during the local king's hunting trip, a male deer offered to sacrifice himself to save the life of a female deer that the king was aiming to kill. Impressed, the king then declared his park would thereafter be a deer sanctuary.
According to the Mahaparinibbana sutra that is sutra 16 of the Digha Nikaya, the Buddha mentioned Sarnath as one of the four Buddhist pilgrimage sites his devout followers should visit and look upon with feelings of reverence. The other three sites are Lumbini, the birthplace of the Buddha; Bodh Gaya, where Buddha achieved enlightenment; and, Kushinagar, where the Buddha attained parinirvana.
Sarnath is located northeast of Varanasi near the confluence of the Ganges and the Varuna rivers.
Etymology
The name Sarnath derives from the Sanskrit word , which translates to 'Lord of the Deer' in English. The name refers to an ancient Buddhist legend, in which the Bodhisattva was a deer and offered his life to a king instead of the doe the king was planning to kill.The king was so moved that he created the park as a deer sanctuary. The term for deer park is in Sanskrit, or Miga-dāya in Pali.
Isipatana is another name used to refer to Sarnath in Pali, the language of the Pali Canon. This name corresponds to in Sanskrit.
The terms isi and refer to an accomplished and enlightened person. Isipatana and therefore translate to "the place where holy men descended", or "the hill of the fallen sages".
History
5th century BCE – 6th century CE
Buddhism flourished in Sarnath during the second urbanisation,, from the time of the Mahajanapadas through the Nanda Empire and Maurya Empire periods, in part because of patronage from kings and wealthy merchants based in Varanasi. By the 3rd century CE, Sarnath had become an important centre for the Sammatiya school of Buddhism, one of the early Buddhist schools, as well as for art and architecture.However, the presence of images of Heruka and Tara indicate that Vajrayana Buddhism was also practised there. Images of Hindu deities such as Shiva and Brahma were also found at the site, while a Jain temple was located very close to the Dhamek Stupa.
Buddhism further expanded in India during the Gupta period. Faxian was a Chinese Buddhist monk who travelled extensively throughout northern India from 400 to 411 CE. In his description of Sarnath, he mentioned seeing four large towers and two viharas with monks residing in them.
6th – 8th centuries CE
The influence of Buddhism continued to grow during the Later Gupta. When Xuanzang visited Sarnath around 640 CE, he reported seeing hundreds of small shrines and votive stupas, and a vihara some in height containing a large statue of the Buddha. Xuanzang also wrote that "There are about 1500 priests here, who study the Little Vehicle according to the Sammatiya school. In his writings, Xuanzang mentioned a pillar constructed by Ashoka near a stupa that marked the location where the Buddha set the wheel of the law in motion.8th – 12th centuries CE
During the Pala period, the rulers built new mahaviharas such as Odantapuri, Somapura, Jagaddala, and Vikramashila and patronised existing ones such as Nalanda and Sarnath. During this time, Buddhist pilgrims and monks from all over Asia travelled to Sarnath to meditate and study. The Palas were the last major Buddhist dynasty to rule in the Indian subcontinent. They were replaced by the Gahadavala dynasty, whose capital was located at Varanasi.Although the Gahadavala kings were Hindu, they were tolerant of Buddhism. Inscriptions unearthed at Sarnath in the early 20th century indicate that some of the monasteries there enjoyed royal patronage from the Gahadavala rulers. For example, in a mid-12th-century inscription attributed to Queen Kumaradevi and member of the Pithipati dynasty of Bodh Gaya. She takes credit for the construction or restoration of a living quarters for monks.
It is widely asserted that the structure referred to in the Kumaradevi inscription is the Dharma Chakra Jina Vihar, but the evidence for this is inconclusive. Whatever the case, it is likely to be among the last structures to be built at Sarnath prior to its destruction in 1194. The inscription, excavated at Sarnath in March 1908, is currently maintained at the Sarnath Archeological Museum.
Late 12th century: the destruction of Sarnath
Along with Sarnath, the most important Buddhist mahaviharas in India were Vikramashila, Odantapuri, and Nalanda, all located in present-day Bihar. All four of these centres of learning continued to thrive throughout the 12th century, probably because of the protection, support and tolerance demonstrated by the Pala and Gahadavala rulers. For example, the Kumaradevi inscription mentions that King Govindachandra had protected Varanasi from invasions by the Ghaznavids which the inscription refers to as Turushkas in the early to mid-12th century. Apart from North India, Buddhism had been declining throughout the Indian subcontinent and had virtually disappeared by the 11th century.Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent in the late 12th century brought massive plunder and destruction to northern India. Most notable among these were the Indian campaigns of Muhammad of Ghor, the Ghurid dynasty ruler from Ghazni, which is in present-day Afghanistan. Qutb ud-Din Aibak — the commander of Muhammad of Ghor's army — led his men from Ghazni to Varanasi and Sarnath in 1194 CE. Jayachandra was the reigning Gahadavala dynasty king at that time and was killed during the Battle of Chandawar. Virtually everything of value in Varanasi and Sarnath was destroyed or plundered.
Qutbuddin Aibek reportedly carted away some 1400 camel loads of treasure. According to the 13th-century Persian historian Hasan Nizami, "nearly 1000 temples were destroyed and mosques were raised on their foundations, the Rais and chiefs of Hind came forward to proffer their allegiance ".
While Qutbuddin Aibek destroyed Sarnath, it was the troops of Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khalji—another of Muhammad of Ghor's slave generals—that continued to destroy sites sacred to Buddhists. They destroyed Vikramashila in 1193, Odantapuri in 1197, and Nalanda in 1200. The Buddhists who survived in northern India fled to Nepal, Sikkim, Tibet, or South India. By the end of the 12th century, Buddhist monastic centers and their vast libraries had nearly disappeared from the Indian subcontinent.
However, according to some scholars, fresh re-assessments of evidence from archaeology in addition to historical records have disputed this view of Muslim invasions as the major cause of the decline of Buddhism in India or the destruction of such Buddhist sites as Sarnath — arguing, instead, "that Brahmanical hostility toward Buddhists resulted in the destruction of Sarnath and other sites". According to archaeologist Giovanni Verardi: "Contrary to what is usually believed, the great monasteries of Gangetic India, from Sarnath to Vikramaśīla, from Odantapurī to Nālandā, were not destroyed by the Muslims, but appropriated and transformed by the Brahmans with only the occasional intervention of the Muslim forces". According to Verardi, "orthodox" Brahmins — who had been gaining in power and influence during the Gahadavala and Sena dynasties, the rival Hindu-revivalist dynasties of northern/eastern India — "accepted Muslim rule in exchange for the extirpation of Buddhism and the repression of the social sectors in revolt." Archaeologist Federica Barba writes that the Gahadavalas built large Hindu temples in traditional Buddhist sites such as Sarnath, and converted Buddhist shrines into Brahmanical ones: Evidence indicates that Buddhists had been expelled from Sarnath during the mid 12th-century, under the Gahadavala rule, and it already was in the process of being converted to a large Shiva temple compound before Muslim invaders arrived.
18th century: rediscovery and looting
Very few Buddhists remained in India after their persecution and expulsion at the end of the 12th century by the Ghurids. Buddhists from Tibet, Burma, and Southeast Asia continued to make pilgrimages to South Asia from the 13th to the 17th centuries, but their most common destination was Bodh Gaya and not Sarnath. Sarnath continued to be a place of pilgrimage for Jains, however. A 17th-century Jain manuscript written in 1612 CE describes a Jain temple in Varanasi as being located close to "a famous Bodisattva sanctuary" at a place called dharmeksā. This Sanskrit word translates to "pondering of the law", and clearly refers to the Dhamek Stupa.India experienced an increase in visitation by European people in the late 18th century. In 1778, William Hodges became possibly the first British landscape painter to visit India. While there, he made careful observations of the art and architecture he encountered. He published an illustrated book about his travels in India in 1794. In his book, he described mosques and other Islamic architecture, Hindu temples, and Greek-inspired columns. Hodges also briefly described the Dhamek Stupa, although he mistook it to be a ruined Hindu temple.
In what is the first incontrovertible modern reference to the ruins at Sarnath, Jonathan Duncan described the discovery of a green marble reliquary encased in a sandstone box in the relic chamber of a brick stupa at that location. The reliquary was discovered in January 1794, during the dismantling of a stupa by employees of Zamindar Jagat Singh. Duncan published his observations in 1799.
The reliquary contained a few bones and some pearls, which were subsequently thrown into the Ganges river. The reliquary itself has also disappeared, although the outer sandstone box was replaced in the relic chamber, where it was rediscovered by Cunningham in 1835. The bricks of the stupa were hauled off and used for the construction of the market in Jagatganj, Varanasi. Jagat Singh and his crew also removed a large part of the facing of the Dhamek Stupa, and removed several Buddha statues which he retained at his house in Jagatganj.