Stupas in Orissa (Study)

by Meenakshi Chauley | 2013 | 109,845 words

This study examines the Stupas and Votive Stupas in Odisha or Orissa (Eastern India).—In this thesis an attempt has been made to trace the historicity of Buddhism in Odisha on the basis of the architectural development of the Stupa architecture. Archaeological evidence obtained from excavated sites dates such structures as early as third-second cen...

Orissa During the time of Harshavardhan

[Full title: Political and Religious History of Orissa (10): During the time of Harshavardhan]

Conflict and vandalism between sects within Buddhism (Hinayana and Mahayana sects) and of Buddhism with other religious sects continued up till 643 CE, when Harshavardhan conquered Orissa, which included Utkala and Kangoda and for its administration appointed a governor. During the visit of Harsha, Hinayanism was more popular in Orissa. Hiuen-Tsang conforms that, “The Hinayanists of Orissa were very strict and could not stand the Mahayanists, they compared them with Kapalikas, and for forgetting the dictum of the teacher. They used to attack violently the neo-Buddhists”.

After his invasion of Kangoda in 643 CE, when Harsha returned to Orissa, the Hinayana priest was not very happy to hear that the king built a vihara of brass close to the Nalanda convent. The priest presented a treatise composed by Prajna Gupta in seven hundred slokas and openly challenged for a debate between both the sects. It is believed that Acharya Silabhadra the Chancellor of Nalanda convent deputed four great scholars i.e Sagaramati, Prajnarasmi, Simharasmi and Hiuen-Tsang to go to Orissa in order to contest the Hinayanists of that country, at which all of them except the Chinese pilgrim expressed an unusual fear and nervousness about the outcome of the contest (Beal 1911:159). It is stated that although Hiuen-Tsang consoled and encouraged his three friends, he himself found the treatise of Prajanaparamita a hard nut to crack. This certainly reveals the inefficiency and fear of the Nalanda philosophers to face the Hinayana monks of Kangoda (Das 1978: 144). This fear of the Nalanda Philosophers to face the Hinayanists of Orissa reveals the sign of canker that had started within Mahayana by the seventh century CE (Sahu 1955:31). It is not known whether this religious conference was held or not, but it is obvious that there was a clash at that time between ideas and ideals of these two schools of Buddhism (Donaldson 2000:5).

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