Religion, ‘nature’ and environmental ethics in ancient India: archaeologies of human:non-human suffering and well-being in early Buddhist and Hindu contexts

Abstract

This paper assesses archaeology's contribution to debates regarding the ecological focus of early Buddhism and Hinduism and its relevance to global environmentalism. Evidence for long-term human:non-human entanglement, and the socioeconomically constructed element of 'nature' on which Indic culture supposedly rests, challenges post-colonial tropes of India's utopian, 'eco-friendly' past, whilst also highlighting the potency of individual human:non-human epistemologies for building historically grounded models of Indian environmentalism. For early Buddhism,I mediate between two polarized views: one promoting the idea of 'eco-dharma', as a reflection of Buddhism's alignment with non-violence (ahiṃsā), and the alleviation of suffering (dukkha); a second arguing that early Buddhist traditions have been misappropriated by western environmentalism. I argue that the latter view subscribes to canonical models of passive monks removed from worldly concerns, despite archaeological evidence for socially-engaged monastic landlordism from the late centuries BC. Others cite this evidence only to negate Buddhism's eco-credentials, thereby overlooking the human:non-human entanglement theme within modern environmental discourse, while the predominant focus on non-human suffering overlooks convergences between modern and ancient ecological ethics and environmental health. Case studies include examples of Buddhist land and water management in central India, set within discussions of human v. non-human-centric frameworks of well-being and suffering, purity and pollution, and broader Indic medico-ecological epistemologies, as possible models for collective responses to environmental stress.

A ‘Reflexive’ Multi-Stage Survey Methodology for Historical Landscape Research in Central India:Field-Walking, Local Knowledge, and Satellite Imagery as Archaeological Site Prospection and Mapping Tools in the Sanchi Survey Project

“…Elsewhere I have argued that the methodological shortcomings of the 1980s Ganga valley surveys are exacerbated further by a general lack of integration between the theories and methods of landscape studies, and a failure to acknowledge the potential strengths of localized research designs that capitalize on local cultural practices 1 . Further, despite lengthy accounts of European sampling strategies and statistical spatial analyses, both Erdosy 20 and Lal 21 perpetuate traditional polarizations such as 'ritual' versus 'secular' 61 , or 'cultural' versus 'natural' 3,62 categories and spheres of action, and thus despite a shift of emphasis from monuments to settlements, simply replace one narrow category with another. The resulting distribution maps are organized according to the periodization of habitational settlements and associated pottery to the exclusion of all other site types.…”

“…Ironically therefore, despite using landscape-oriented methods, such studies remain rooted in a 'site-based' modality, just as early extensive surveys in Europe represented changes in 'techniques and methods rather than in theory and metaphysics' 16 . Further, by excluding non-settlement data from the focus of enquiry, religio-ideological and political based models of Early Historic state-formation and urbanization in the Ganga valley 63 lack empirical corroboration as provided elsewhere by more integrated landscape studies that help challenge traditional centralized models of state 1,3,44 .…”

“…While decisions regarding where one site begins and another ends commonly draw on architectural and topographical divisions such as walls or cliffs, history and epistemology are also key influencing factors. Thus, the decision to include the dam and the Buddhist monuments at Sanchi within a single archaeological complex drew on wider evidence for the role of water management in Buddhist 'Monastic Governmentality' 2,3,40,41,66 , the repetition of related inter-site patterns across the study area, and general recognition of the 'entangled' nature of human : non-human : environment relationships 3,62 . Chronological divisions, together with the changing site usage and custodianship, however, are less easy to determine.…”

“…Resulting in the documentation of 134 'sites', the study aimed to assess the spatial and temporal links between a single Buddhist site and its immediate archaeological setting. Although the wider manifestation of these patterns beyond the spatially restricted study area thus remains unknown, the resulting dataset is important for assessing text-driven theories regarding modes of interaction between monastic and lay populations, and offers useful parallels to similar, although more broadly dispersed patterns documented during the SSP [1][2][3]40,41 . In recent years, other similar projects focusing on historical socio-economic, agrarian and religious landscape dynamics have proliferated, from those dealing with Buddhist contexts 6,[42][43][44][45][46] , to those more aligned with later Hindu traditions [47][48][49] .…”

“…The project is aimed at relating diachronic socio-ecological and ritual landscape patterns to the histories of urbanism, land use, and broader forms of human : non-human : environment engagement from the late centuries BCE to mid' first millennium CE [1][2][3] . Although the project was initiated in 1998, remote sensing was only introduced in 2003 as a means to aid mapping and to test a subset of imagery as a potential tool for archaeological prospection.…”