The Economic Power of Women in Early South Asian Buddhism

The Economic Power of Women in Early South Asian Buddhism Matthew D. Milligan Georgia College & State University The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 56.1 (2019): 1-25 ABSTRACT This article serves as a contribution to the financial primacy of Buddhist women in early historic South Asia. Presented here is a single case study from the first century bce monastic stūpa site from Central India called Sanchi whereby gender demographics are analysed over two subsequent stages of funding. Investments by women not only fuelled the construction of the built landscape but, as time went on, female donors were crucial to the economic solvency of the monastic institution at Sanchi. Such a micro-history of Buddhist women from classical India illustrates the agency of women during Buddhism’s formative years. KEYWORDS Buddhism, gender, social history, patronage LINK https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0019464618817367 **Please download the FINAL version of the paper from the link above Below is the accepted version of the paper (from September 2018) and may differ slightly from the published version*** The Economic Power of Women in Early South Asian Buddhism Dr. Matthew D. Milligan Email: Mattdmilligan@gmail.com Corresponding Address: Georgia College & State University, 231 W. Hancock St., Milledgeville, GA 31061 (USA) Phone: +1-512-577-0585 [Accepted for Publication] The Indian Economic & Social History Review 1 Abstract: This paper serves as a contribution to the financial primacy of Buddhist women in early historic South Asia. Presented here is a single case study from the 1st century BCE monastic stūpa site from central India called Sanchi whereby gender demographics are analysed over two subsequent stages of funding. Investments by women not only fuelled the construction of the built landscape but as time went on female donors were crucial to the economic solvency of the monastic institution at Sanchi. Such a micro-history of Buddhist women from classical India illustrates the agency of women during Buddhism's formative years. Keywords: Buddhism; Gender; Social History; Patronage Word count: 9031 2 Introduction In many ways, and in many times, the history of Buddhism may be adequately characterized by its philosophy, by its monasticism, or even by its political and social advocacy. However, the history of early Buddhism—and indeed early Buddhists—remains heavily obscured primarily due to a lack of sources, a lack of understanding of those sources, or a problematic focus on origins. As a result, the social history of the everyday actors who comprised the roster of early Buddhists in South Asia where Buddhism began have frequently fallen through the cracks. One way to metaphorically ‘catch’ them without discovering new material such as manuscripts or inscriptions, or inventing a time machine, is to reconsider old evidences from a new angle. As such, the purpose of this paper is to utilize a known, published commodity—donative epigraphy from central India from two-thousand years ago—and view it from a diachronic economic lens. In excavating this large dataset, in this paper, I am revealing a small glimpse into the lives of some ordinary Buddhists largely unknown to the great literatures of Buddhism. The most volatile and perhaps most misplaced demographic is that of the female Buddhist patron, whose presence in the historical record is, at best, stochastic. What I present in this essay is not a claim about the absolute status of women in South Asian Buddhism, ancient or modern. Rather, I am using the available evidence to argue for the economic primacy of women within one early Buddhist community, here called a saṃgha (‘monastic institution’). The data marshalled together in the form of a micro-history finds women continually at the core of the enterprise to obtain financial resources to construct and enlarge public religious monuments that fostered the growth of Buddhism in South Asia as an institutionalized religion. Religious patronage to Buddhist saṃgha-s has largely been thought of as a mostly royal and elite endeavour in classical South Asia whereby the great monarchs like 3 Bimbisāra or Aśoka established monasteries, stūpa-s, or colossal images to either the Buddha, his immediate disciples, or to contemporary holy bhikṣu-s who performed important rites. Nevertheless, much recent scholarship on the concept of early Buddhist patronage has reoriented the study of patronage away from the royals of literature and edicts and has more or less rediscovered the importance of the generous ‘collective’ of society 1, which surprisingly includes the monastics themselves 2 as well as mothers, daughters, students, and teachers.3 Even though the study of early Buddhist patronage must undoubtedly include Aśoka Maurya, king of Magadha during much of the 3rd century BCE, due to his self-proclaimed role in propagating dharma and the fact that he may have initially founded many Buddhist pilgrimage spaces throughout the Indian subcontinent, it is not his name that is found on any financial records that document the creation—through generous donations—of monasteries, stūpa-s, or temples. Instead, it is the names of real people who did not have the ability to leave edicts in their name, or to have devotional histories written. All that is known about the identity of those individuals are hundreds if not thousands of short, pithy donative records etched into permanent sandstone alongside the monuments they assisted in begetting. Sanchi The history of the Sanchi saṁgha is in many ways the history of Indian Buddhism. Some of our earliest surviving monuments and records may be found at Sanchi and it was inhabited until Buddhism's decline in India. Similarly, the history of studying Sanchi in many ways characterizes the history of studying Indian Buddhism. The decipherment of the Mauryan brāhmī script by James Prinsep 4 came from studying the many small, short inscriptions dotting the monuments. I am now using those very same inscriptions to produce new arguments concerning the development of the Buddhist institution and its relationship to economic prosperity. For 4 various reasons—its nearly unrivalled early Buddhist relief art, reliquaries, or even its by-chance high level of preservation—Sanchi has long been the subject of academic fascination. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site of India in 1989, Sanchi5 resides outside the heartland of Buddhist history. Located nearly 2,200 kilometres from Sarnath in Uttar Pradesh, and some 2,800 kilometres from Bodh Gaya in Bihar, Sanchi is an unlikely location for early Indian Buddhist history because of its distance from Magadha. Emperor Aśoka's (c. 273-236 B.C.E.) patronage may be one possible reason for the site's early growth and construction of monumental structures. According to legend, before he became emperor, Aśoka accepted the position as Viceroy of the Mauryan Empire headquartered in Vidisha. Vidisha served as a focal point for the Mauryan Empire because it was a large city centrally positioned along a major trade route. Northern Black Polished Ware associated with the city’s ancient rampart shows the city’s earliest urban occupation occurred around the time of the Mauryas. Sanchi also sat between Vidisha and Ujjain, which were large urban, trade centres during the Early Historic period. The overflow of wealth passing between Vidisha and Ujjain undoubtedly gave the religious community a great advantage in seeking donations, evidenced by the numerous donations recorded in stone at Sanchi. The establishment of a religious centre on Sanchi’s hilltop may have been as much economically motivated 6 as it was spiritually. 7 Unfortunately, neither purely administrative documents nor religious manuscript sources have survived from the earliest centuries of the Early Historic period. In their place are these inscriptional records which are in abundance at Sanchi and its satellites. Because of Sanchi's enormous number of inscriptions and the wealth of information that may be derived from reading them, I believe they can be effectively analysed together (and individually) to identify some patterns and changes within the Buddhist saṁgha in the area. Donative epigraphy acts as a 5 powerful historical lens through which we can view the distant past to consider some aspects of Buddhist practice at places like Sanchi that housed relics of not only the Buddha but disciples and disciples of disciples. In my view, the large number of inscriptions from Sanchi may be analysed from two perspectives. First, they could be presented and analysed individually. In such a micro-analysis, words, grammar, and material context (meaning their placement and location at the site) can be carefully unpacked for study. A second macro-analytical perspective relies not on individual (or small groups of) inscriptions but rather on reading large numbers of them together to yield a quantifiable dataset from which information can be interpreted. Donative inscriptions record gifts made to the Buddhist community at Sanchi. A donative inscription may be broken down into individual elements. Each element, or anatomical part, contains important data which can be compared, contrasted, and listed in a database with other similar data. The records are relatively short and contain varying amounts of demographics pertaining to persons who gifted towards the construction or enlargement of the reliquary site. 8 A few basic inscriptions from Sanchi read: Sanchi Inscription 275 9 (1st century BCE) L110 isirakhitasa dānaṁ ‘A gift of Isirakhita.’11 Sanchi Inscription 281 12 L1 dhamarakhitāya madhuvanikāye dānaṁ ‘A gift of Dhamarakhitā, [a woman] from Madhuvana.’ Sanchi Inscription 288 13 L1 pusasa cahaṭiyasa bhuchuno dānaṁ ‘A gift of the monk Pusa [from] Cahaṭa.’ The phenomenon of the donative record does not just occur at Sanchi but also at many other Buddhist sites from roughly the same contemporary Early Historic period. 14 The inscriptions studied here are in the Aśokan brāhmī script and typical northern Indian epigraphical Prakrit 6 language. Although several of these inscriptions are unreadable due to wear, most have some data to contribute to this study and are tabulated in various ways below. The total epigraphic corpus at Sanchi is extremely large, especially comparing the total site to contemporary (or even later) stūpa complexes, open-air or rock-cut. Partially, this is because Sanchi happened to survive the sands of time considerably well. However, the excavation, conservation and preservation of the site—as controversial as some of the efforts may be—has also seen the tremendous amount of extant material evidence (especially the relief art seen from stūpa 1’s toraṇa-s) be restored and made available for study. Other sites, such as Amaravati in Andhra15 and, now, Kanaganahalli in Karnataka 16 are comparable in size, amount of artistic material, and perhaps, at one time, in the raw amount of epigraphy, but have not had as much historical luck in what has survived. My recent effort to re-read and re-contextualized all Sanchi’s readable inscriptions. 17 Not only did I construct a new relative chronology of the different inscriptions appearing on the various monuments, but I showed that the total epigraphic corpus may be much more useful in investigating economic concerns of the monastic saṃgha and its elite local saints (self-identified as Gotiputas based on a rare metronymic) than previously thought. 18 In this paper, I again deploy this relative chronology to conduct an intense examination of female donors at Sanchi. All told, according to my research, there are 606 total readable donative inscriptions at Sanchi that yield sociological information for this study. Of those, I find that there are 518 total donors. For the first time in the study of Sanchi’s inscriptions, these inscriptions are now able to be sorted into distinct time-periods, which are presumably one after the other. They are called Generation 1 and Generation 2 and, in this paper, I have adopted this scheme for simplification purposes. During Generation 1, which I estimate dates to the middle of the 1 st century BCE, there 7 were 226 individual donors contributing 244 total donations. Generation 2 contained more donors and more donations—with 292 individual donors contributing 362 total donations. Generation 2 presumably dates to the later decades of the 1 st century BCE. The relationship between the two Generations is likely, according to this analysis, only a few decades. Therefore, using this dating sequence, we can track changes to the donor groups over time and identify major trends, such as demographic background, locality, and relationship to the monastic saṃgha. Historiography of Gender in Early South Asian Buddhism It was the work of two female Pāli-language specialists, Caroline Rhys Davids (1857-1942) and Isaline B. Horner (1896-1981), who first emphasized the role of women in early Buddhism through their translations of the Therīgāthā19 and the six volumes of the Vinaya-Piṭaka.20 While the importance of making accessible a complete Buddhist vinaya in translation (and also through published and carefully edited editions of the text in Pāli) is self-evident, the translation and presentation of the relatively unknown Therīgāthā was important in its own right as it may have been a collection of seventy-three poems attributed to elder nuns (therī-s) sometime between the 3rd century BCE and the 6th century CE.21 The content and themes of the nuns’ poetic anthology ranges from the enlightenment experience to the problems and hardships of renunciation (for instance, a recurring theme is leaving family behind to go forth and become an ordained nun). The poems are also noteworthy simply because they are some of the first poetry in South Asia and that they are some of the first poems written—or at least probably mostly written—by women. In the century since Rhys Davids and Horner, the ‘women’s question’22 pertaining to ancient Indian social history has not gone ignored, although its importance has waned and 8 become deeply embedded in a number of deeply complicated relatively modern political issues such as South Asia’s recent post-coloniality and the rise of feminism in the West. Altekar’s milestone book The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization 23 represents something of a ‘traditional’ approach toward understanding women in ancient Indian religion but the book— along with similar types of studies—are replete with problems which limit their utility. For example, as discussed elsewhere 24, these kinds of works were constructed almost entirely from Sanskritic, elite, normative sources such as brāhmaṇical texts which held inherent biases. Moreover, particularly with Altekar’s well-intentioned book, there came to be a problematic mythological model that the status of women was, at least during the Vedic period, quite high— in fact, higher than the position of women in the ancient Mediterranean world— but only declined afterward due to a variety of reasons, something Altekar himself seemed to mourn given his seemingly progressive intent. Such perspectives have been aptly typified as ‘nationalist historiography’25 that ought to be rewritten since the absence of social history and individual agency restricts our attempts to understand the relationship between women and the institutions they worked within and without thousands of years ago. Feminist studies of women in Buddhism26 sought to discard these old romantic and mythological notions by openly highlighting misogyny and androcentrism within the textual corpus and re-emphasizing smaller studies of individual texts, groups, and ideas to offer analyses rooted in well-informed readings which may or may not match with readings of any other text given the vast multitude of types of texts, authors, and sectarian philosophies.27 It was within this rejuvenated scholarly nexus that several edited anthologies by dozens of scholars emerged to set the pace for the study of women in ancient India, particularly in ancient Buddhism, for the foreseeable future. Topics of the anthologies were broad in scope even though the essays contained therein were formidable in 9 their micro-analyses of individual texts and ideas. 28 To assist in recovering any fragment of the social historical reality from early Buddhism, I suggest that we may turn to material evidence which has been largely misunderstood in many previous studies. From material evidence, in this paper, what I call the ‘economic power’ of early Buddhist women in ancient central India demonstrates the complexity of not just the sociopolitical sphere of the Early Historic period but also the financial liberality of early Buddhism and economic potentiality of all demographics. Gender in Epigraphy The epigraphic material evidence presented below formulates a preliminary economic history of Buddhist women at one of the earliest and largest findspots for historical evidence available in South Asia. However, the field of economic history of Early Historic or earlier South Asia is still in its infancy, although some archaeologists, such as Monica Smith 29, Kathleen D. Morrison30, Carla Sinopoli31 and Mark Kenoyer 32 made great efforts to add to the corpus. The economic history of religion of ancient South Asian Buddhism (and religion in general) is nearly nonexistent, minus a handful of problematic books and scattered articles or chapters discussed below. Most scholarly works that fall within this genre are textual studies of economic thought rather than economic histories which examine primary evidence on the ground. Investigations of economic thought33 from texts are invaluable for framing the conversation regarding economic history since texts—at least from South Asia—are frequently the only avenues to pursue given the lack of excavated or extant material evidence. Despite the ever-growing canon of academic forays into ancient South Asian religious economic thought from texts, most recent journeys in the economic history of religion in South Asia tend to utilize epigraphy as the primary source since it provides more direct insights into historical actors in their own words—or close to their 10 own words—and not just into the minds of articulate virtuoso authors of text. Investigating epigraphy diachronically within context of socio-political frameworks has led to some foundational scholarly works on the topic of economic religious history in ancient South Asia. Himanshu P. Ray’s Monastery and Guild34 presented Buddhism during the Sātavāhana era as well-suited to merchants, guilds, and individuals upset with the status quo in society, a sentiment echoed in many texts as Rotman35 has demonstrated in the Divyāvadāna which contained an ‘unmistakable mercantile ethos.’ Central to H.P. Ray’s book36 was the treatment of Early Historic period Buddhist monasteries as important economic centres, a phenomenon that has received a fair amount of attention in recent years by other scholars as well.37 Monasteries promoted local agricultural production and facilitated trade along the Uttarāpatha and Dakṣināpatha trade route capillaries. Archaeologist Lars Fogelin’s work on Early Historic period Thotlakonda monastery in modern day Andhra Pradesh led him to argue that the ‘monastery and local populations were actively engaged, both economically and ritually, with each other.’38 Lay laborers routinely assisted in generating and producing subsistence for the monastics while receiving teachings and/or merit in return. They lived nearby but not inside the monastery. Despite daily economic and ritual engagement with each other, the monks lived separately and were largely contained out of sight from the general populous. Therefore, Fogelin concluded that, at least at Thotlakonda, monasteries functioned as both retreats and economic centres.39 This idea, derived almost exclusively from archaeological evidence interpreted by an archaeologist, coincides with the arguments presented by H.P. Ray40 and also supports the notion of Buddhist renunciation as anti-culture41 due to the symbiotic relationship between not only the saṁgha and the laity but also between economic and monastic concerns.42 Primarily, the inscriptional genre relevant at Sanchi and other early Indian Buddhist sites 11 are what Salomon calls ‘private donations.’43 Also commonly called just ‘donative inscriptions’ by other scholars for much of the past century, especially with regard to the Buddhist inscriptions at places like Sanchi, private donations are nearly always religious in nature and are numerous compared to other genres.44 Salomon has called private donative inscriptions ‘less formal’ than most royal praśasti-s.45 Nearly always, these inscriptions are small endowments to institutions for the sake of repairs, maintenance, and construction of smaller physical features like water tanks, images, or stūpa-s, although some may record perpetual endowments. I recently explored the features and utility of private donative epigraphs at Sanchi46 in considerable depth through a detailed re-reading of all Sanchi’s known donative epigraphy and also fleshed out a detailed relative chronology for the epigraphy, which is relied upon in the present paper. It is largely unknown how and when donations were collected (or inscribed) but there is some evidence to suggest that stūpa sites like Sanchi were controlled with monastic supervision and primarily funded by monastic patrons.47 The classical scholarly corpus of Indian Buddhism has scarcely lingered on the historical presence of nuns (i.e., through epigraphy or archaeology). The large masterwork tome that is Etienne Lamotte’s History of Indian Buddhism48 references the epigraphic record but does not discuss the presence of nuns other than that they merely existed as donors the same as monks. Other adroit works on the social history of Buddhism include similarly descriptive presentations of women and nuns in South Asian Buddhist epigraphy. For example, Uma Chakravarti’s The Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism 49 contains hundreds of important references and discussions of the political, economic, royal, and social landscape according to the Pāli canon and other textual sources of knowledge from prior to the turn to the Common Era. Nevertheless, the book’s use of inscriptions is unfortunately mostly relegated to a few passing mentions, 12 although her Appendix B contains a tidy re-presentation of Heinrich Lüders’ A List of Brahmi Inscriptions.50 More useful are focused scholarly efforts to highlight what Salomon 51 once termed the ‘epigraphic habit’ in South Asia post-Aśoka. Although inscriptions have been an object of fascination and a primary source by and of historians since the beginning of colonial Indian studies, little attention was paid to gender. Bimala Churn Law in 1940 wrote a very short Epigraphica Indica entry on nuns but was more or less only interested in documenting their mere existence and connecting them (via Aśoka) to literature.52 Even though the usage of epigraphy in the construction of socio-historical arguments was limited or non-existent throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the usage of epigraphy to explore gender did not appear until the late 20 th century. Gregory Schopen’s landmark article on monks, nuns, and so-called ‘vulgar’ practices remains one of the most convincing and powerful arguments that monastic Buddhists—nuns in particular—were not only involved in the patronage of cult images, monasteries, and stūpa-s but were often the instigators. 53 A more gender-oriented approach to the epigraphy may be found in a new monograph that traces the epigraphic phenomenon from Sanchi through to the medieval period.54 Along the same lines, a very comprehensive recent book55 takes to task the theoretical pitfalls befallen earlier historians such as Altekar 56 while simultaneously connecting female patrons to early Buddhist saṃgha’s throughout South Asia to each other through historical phenomena such as charity and kinship. Regarding Sanchi and its inscriptions in particular, N.G. Majumdar’s treatment of the Sanchi epigraphic corpus contained within John Marshall’s excavation report remains the most comprehensive source for data. 57 Several scholars 58 have updated some of the finer details and modernized the sociological analyses; however, by and large those sifting through Sanchi’s 13 inscriptional data relied heavily on the observations in the old report by Marshall, Foucher, and Majumdar,59 although these modernizing re-readings and summaries do rightly pay close attention to the demographic data including gender, occupation, and familial relations contained therein. At least one noteworthy attempt was made not long ago to compound epigraphy with archaeological and historical data to synthesize and re-present Early Historic period central India (identified as ancient Malwa) in order to trace the urbanization process as it related to sociopolitical phenomenon such as caste, kinship, and governance.60 Several attempts were also made by scholars in the last few decades to localize the epigraphic phenomenon and draw out arguments from the epigraphic data. In an attempt to pick up where Law once left off so long ago, Nancy Barnes 61 focused on Sanchi to tease out the historical Indian Buddhist nun, whom, she observed, in concordance with Schopen, 62 was an equal participant in the patronage phenomenon. Vidya Dehejia 63 argued that post-Aśokan Buddhist patronage was largely the result of an egalitarian ‘collective’ but failed to connect gender into her interesting formulation, which has since been heavily disputed by Milligan64 who emphasized wealthy elites (including women) and their vast, influential patronage networks at Sanchi. A little known but important approach to gender in the Sanchi inscriptions done by Kumkum Roy65 emphasized gender identity markers in relation to other categories such as profession, kin-relations, and natal residence. For instance, her argument that women selfidentified with certain markers more than men (for example, in kin-relations) is exemplary for its careful analysis and undoubtedly influences the present study. Alice Collett 66 recently published a nuanced, complete look at one underrepresented aspect of Buddhist nuns in Indian epigraphy and convincingly marshalled epigraphic evidence to show how nuns, contrary to some textual premises, constructed their own teacher-disciple lineages irrespective of the known ordination 14 procedures existing in texts, which may or may not have even been known at places like Sanchi. Such updates and contemporary perspectives to old material is necessary to move the historical discourse surrounding Sanchi and early Buddhism forward. Unfortunately, relying purely on Marshall, Foucher, and Majumdar’s67 list, or Lüders’ even older List68 can invariably skew the data collection process since the epigraphy at Sanchi was placed at different times and on different monuments, as I demonstrated before.69 Reading the lists and simply tallying the occurrences of words or identity markers will smooth the dataset’s numbers across nearly a century (1st century BCE) and potentially mislead the researcher who may be attempting to make a historical argument. Moreover, beyond the deceptively difficult task of simply calculating the data from the epigraphic corpus, many scholars who attempt to utilize the data simply describe the Sanchi donors as they see them, meaning they present individual inscriptions as representing the historical whole. Such representation conflates ‘exceptions’ with the ‘rules’ and demonstrates that we must go further than description only and use the epigraphic data in new analytical and statistical ways, which is what I attempt to do below. Gender Demographics Our starting point for understanding each of the patronage Generations at Sanchi is an assessment of the largest population available: all donors. Generation 1 at Sanchi contained 244 donative inscriptions which were usable for extracting basic information. From those 244 inscriptions, I identify 226 unique individual donors, some of which were responsible for more than one donation in the end, although this was certainly not a common practice. It should be noted that the category of multi-donors only refers to individuals or groups of individuals whose name(s) appear on more than one architectural piece, thus suggesting that they financially contributed more than one time in a way that resulted in their name appearing on an architectural 15 piece. To generate the average donation rate of these 226 donors we can divide the donor number (=226) by the total number of donations (=244) to obtain the average rate of 1.08 gifts per donor. It may come as no surprise that the average number of gifts per donor is close to one since it would take a remarkable devotion to the Buddhist cause or a substantial amount of resources to donate more than once. Contrasting the first Generation is the second Generation which saw an uptick in both the number of donations and the number of individual donors. The donation rate rises to 1.24 gifts per donor during the second era probably due to the rising position of the Buddhist saṃgha in society and most likely due to the increased efficiency of outreach by the saṃgha, meaning not only was the community at large more aware of the Buddhist saṃgha but they were also apparently more sympathetic (or, at the very least, more convinced to part with their resources in the form of donations). 1st GENERATION 1 (mid. c. BCE) GENERATION 2 (late 1st c. BCE) GROUP All DONORS 226 DONATIONS 244 DONATION RATE 1.08 All 292 362 1.24 Table 1: General Comparison of Generations 1 and 2 at Sanchi (1st century BCE) GENERATION 1 GENERATION 2 GROUP Women Women DONOR % 50% 42% DONATION RATE 1.1 1.22 Table 2: Female Donors and Donations at Sanchi during the 1st c. BCE GENERATION 1 GENERATION 2 GROUP Men Men DONOR % 39% 52% DONATION RATE 1.08 1.27 Table 3: Male Donors and Donations at Sanchi during the 1st c. BCE Next, we can explore the gender demographics and determine if there are any major noticeable similarities or differences. We may initially observe that the number of male donors 16 during the first era (=89) is quite a bit lower than the number of female donors (=114). Statistically, identifiable women made up 50% of the total number of donors while identifiable men only made up 39%. The missing difference between these percentages is due to some epigraphic records not yielding gender markers due to erosion or simple written mistakes. It is noteworthy that during the second era, the donor percentages nearly flip in a mirror: there were 151 male donors (=52% of the total) but just 123 female donors (=42% of the total). Between the two eras, the number of female donors in relation to the total number of donors drops nearly 16%, indicating a major shift in funding strategies regarding the raw gender demographics. We may calculate a similar decrease in the total number of donations as well, as female donors went from 125 total donations during Generation 1—or 51% of the total number of donations—to 150 total donations in Generation 2, which was just 41% of the total. Men, on the other hand, mirrored these numbers, rising from 96 total donations (=39%) to 192 donations (=53%) in Generation 2, thus increasing their demographic’s total representation by almost 36% total in relation to the total number of donations overall—a substantial increase, to say the least. Given these inverted patronage demographics, the generalized rising of the donation rate of each gender group is somewhat surprising. Women’s donation rate (1.10) during the first generation was nearly equal to male donation rates (1.08). The second generation saw both rates rise to 1.22 gifts per female donor and 1.27 gifts per male donor. The overall donation rate rose from 1.08 to 1.24 for everyone, thus showing that neither the female or male demographics were left out of this calculation. However, if the number of total female donors dropped by nearly 16% and the number of donations from female donors also dropped by nearly 19%, how is it that the donation rate for women ended up increasing from 1.10 to 1.22 gifts per donor? The answer and potential explanations might be found in a deeper journey into the data leading to a more 17 nuanced understanding of these simple demographics and categories of analysis. Locality Demographics One simple but effective way to put these statistics into greater perspective is to re-analyse them with an additional category of information to sort. To do this, I have utilized a second type of self-identified category derived from the roster of patrons. Many donors’ inscriptions provide their natal locality. For instance, the major difference between the following two inscriptions beyond their given name is where they say they are from: Sanchi Inscription 230 70 (Late 1st c. BCE) L1 gaḍayā bhich[u]niyā vedisikāya dā[na]ṃ ‘A gift of the nun Gaḍā from Vedisa.’ Sanchi Inscription 69 71 (Late 1st c. BCE) L1 ujeniyā kāḍiya bhichuniye dānaṃ ‘A gift of the nun Kāḍī Ujena.’ Both localities are known urban centres: Vidisha is the famous city not far (9km) from Sanchi and Ujjain the massive city located 239km from Sanchi. In the first patronage era at Sanchi, 49% of all donors self-identified as being from a specific place that was not Sanchi itself, whether it is a place we may now identify archaeologically and historically, such as Vidisha and Ujjain, or a place whose name has changed in time. GENERATION 1 GENERATION 2 GROUP Local (all) Local (all) DONOR % 51% 33% DONATION RATE 1.05 1.21 Table 4: Local Donors during the 1st c. BCE GENERATION 1 GENERATION 2 GROUP Non-Local (all) Non-Local (all) DONOR % 49% 67% DONATION RATE 1.11 1.25 Table 5: Non-Local Donors during the 1st c. BCE 18 A second, separate category along these same lines may be identified: those donative inscriptions whose donors do not self-identify as being from any place. I call these donors local donors since they do not identify themselves with even a place like Vidisha, which is not far, famous, and within the boundaries of the patronage network. The inscription below represents a typical local donor: Sanchi Inscription 92 72 (Late 1st c. BCE) L1 cirātiya bhichuniyā dānaṃ ‘A gift of the nun Cirātī.’ The most distinguishing trait separating the local and non-local categories of donors is that the first generation at Sanchi primarily consisted of 116 local donors (51%) but during the second era local donors comprised of just 95 (33%) donors. Comparing the number of local donors to the overall number of total donors of these two eras yields a drop of 37%—which is a somewhat staggering percentage decrease. One obvious question emerges here pertaining to that percentage: is the reduced number of local donors relative to the whole roster of donors a deliberate reduction? If so, why would there be such a deliberate reduction in the number of local patrons to the Sanchi stūpa-s? The sharp decline of local donors to Sanchi does correspond evenly with the sharp rise of non-local donors, which is 67% by Generation 2. Despite these changes, the overall donation rate of gifts per donor for all local and non-local donors between Generation 1 and 2 does, in fact, increase just like the donation rates of all donors from nearly all categories, thus supporting the notion that the previously identified conundrum—meaning the number of female donors dropping 16% between the eras but actually increasing the donation rate from 1.10 to 1.22—is not only isolated and unique to the female patronage demographic since local donors, too, including women and men, exhibit the same tendency by dropping 37% yet increasing their 19 donation rate from 1.05 to 1.21. GENERATION 1 GENERATION 2 GROUP Local Women Local Women DONOR % 26% 10% DONATION RATE 1.08 1.21 Table 6: Local Female Donors during the 1st c. BCE GENERATION 1 GENERATION 2 GROUP Non-Local Women Non-Local Women DONOR % 24% 32% DONATION RATE 1.11 1.22 Table 7: Non-Local Female Donors during the 1 st c. BCE GENERATION 1 GENERATION 2 GROUP Local Men Local Men DONOR % 21% 21% DONATION RATE 1.02 1.24 Table 8: Local Male Donors during the 1st c. BCE GENERATION 1 GENERATION 2 GROUP Non-Local Men Non-Local Men DONOR % 18% 31% DONATION RATE 1.15 1.3 Table 9: Non-Local Male Donors during the 1st c. BCE We may excavate the data even further to analyse some precise differences between local and non-local female and male donors. Local female donors made up 26% of the extant total donor roster during Generation 1 but were reduced to just 10% by Generation 2. Meanwhile, interestingly, despite the overall tendency of the patronage network to reduce the total number of female donors by 16%, non-local female donors increased from 24% to 32%, or a 32% total increase amongst all donors. This phenomenon is starkly different from the numbers of local male donors, whose roster remained nearly identical: 21% for local men during the first Generation and just under 21% during the second Generation. The implication here is that it was not just local donors in general who were targeted for reduced patronage during the second generation but it was specifically local female donors whose demographic was reduced to paltry 20 numbers during Generation 2, while the number of local male donors remained nearly even at the same percentage. Nevertheless, does the data imply a prejudice during Generation 2 against local female donors? Or is there data to suggest that there was a shift in patronage strategy that just happened to adversely affect local female donors? The number of non-local male patrons to Sanchi—just like the number of non-local female patrons to Sanchi—increases at a high rate, jumping from 18% during Generation 1 to 31% during Generation 2. This calculates to a 72% increase in the number of non-local male donors between the generations and corresponds rather well with the 32% increase in the number of non-local female donors between the two generations. The question of deliberate prejudice against the solicitation of female donors may reveal the shifting strategy of the patronage network toward all non-local donors and away from local donors. If there was such a manoeuvre actively put into place by the mastermind fundraisers of the Buddhist saṃgha, it would be a logical tactic to raise funds for the creation and expansion of religious monuments since the local population of potential donors would, at some point, become tapped out of resources. On the other hand, the pool of non-local patrons is theoretically infinite since the saṃgha could raise and manage financial resources from any and every village, town, and city in South Asia. The donation rates, which, amongst the total roster of donors increases from 1.08 gifts per donor to 1.24 during Generation 2, support this supposition since the donation rates amongst all the demographics studied thus far have increased nearly identically, even local women whose donation rate went from 1.08 gifts per donor to 1.21 gifts per donor during Generation 2 despite declining 62% as a whole population! It may not be too much of a stretch to argue that while the strategy of the patronage network shifted away from local female donors the patronage network managed to become even more efficient with those local donors who did 21 manage to contribute more financial resources to the Buddhist saṃgha’s cause, squeezing more donations per donor out from an increasingly smaller number of local patrons. Monastic Demographics Our final foray into the extant primary evidence categorizes the donor demographics by their monastic status, meaning whether the donor was an ordained member of the Buddhist saṃgha. This criterion may be infinitely slippery to theoretically grasp (not to mention physically tally) since the ordination practices of Buddhists is complex and layered. Additionally, there are many potential problems with labelling donors within our roster of patrons as monastic or not since the data itself provides hardly any information regarding monastic seniority, vinaya adherence, or even whether any of the self-identified nuns or monks were temporarily ordained (a common practice in many modern Buddhist countries). With this level of transparency regarding the nuns and monks of Sanchi’s two donor generations, we may tabulate any epigraph whose donor selfidentifies as either a nun, written as bhichuni in Prakrit (Sanskrit bhikṣunī), or monk, bhichu in Prakrit (Sanskrit bhikṣu). Although not within the purview of the present study, many of these monastic donors also self-identified themselves with numerous monastic titles and as pupils of other, possibly more prominent figures within their natal saṃgha-s. GENERATION 1 GENERATION 2 GROUP Local Nuns Local Nuns DONOR % 11% 1% DONATION RATE 1.12 1 Table 10: Local Nun Donors during the 1st c. BCE GENERATION 1 GENERATION 2 GROUP Non-Local Nuns Non-Local Nuns DONOR % 10% 15% DONATION RATE 1.23 1.2 Table 11: Non-Local Nun Donors during the 1 st c. BCE 22 GENERATION 1 GENERATION 2 GROUP Local Monks Local Monks DONOR % 10% 10% DONATION RATE 1.05 1.38 Table 12: Local Monk Donors during the 1 st c. BCE GENERATION 1 GENERATION 2 GROUP Non-Local Monks Non-Local Monks DONOR % 8% 7% DONATION RATE 1.17 1.48 Table 13: Non-Local Monk Donors during the 1st c. BCE The number of local nuns decreases roughly 87% from Generation 1 to Generation 2, thus confirming the previously identified trend of local donors, specifically local female donors, becoming a much smaller target demographic. Surprisingly, however, the non-local nun demographic increases nearly 55% between the generations, again conforming to the other previously identified trend of targeting non-local donors of all kinds during the latter generation. One fascinating observation about the non-local nun demographic is that their donation rate, which remains nearly the same (although quite high) at 1.23 during Generation 1 and 1.20 during Generation 2. Compared to the average donation rate in Generation 1, non-local nuns have a much higher rate but a roughly average donation rate during Generation 2. Contrary to nearly all the female demographics at Sanchi, the monks, both local and nonlocal, remained consistent in their numbers across both generations. Local monks made up 10% of the community in Generation 1 and maintained that percentage in Generation 2. Non-Local monks surprisingly comprised just 8% of the patronage roster in Generation 1 and were just 7% of the roster in the next era. While the percent of the patronage roster remained stable regarding the proportion of both local and non-local monks, the donation rates of both demographics did not remain static. Local monks, just 10% of the community during both generations, saw their donation rate substantially increase from 1.05 gifts per donor to 1.38 gifts per donor, which is 23 one of the largest increases of all demographics. Equally impressive was the increase in donation rate by non-local monks—from 1.17 to 1.48 gifts per donor. The remarkable stability in soliciting monks throughout both Generations is bolstered by the impressive ability to generate even more donations from the same demographic, implying that one of the potential reasons for not increasing the demographic in terms of raw numbers was that the monk community could be interestingly relied upon to gift more per donor. All told, the monk demographic reveals the conscious intention behind the patronage network as an elastic entity seeking to maximize its resources. One speculation about the role of monks—and, indeed, probably non-local nuns also—in the patronage network at Sanchi is that these demographics represented the ideal groups of wealthy and influential patrons that the saṃgha wished to model the rest of the patronage network. Conclusion I have noted some general trends and features regarding the demographics and the nature of the Sanchi patronage network during the 1st century BCE. These demographics are according to extant epigraphic financial records that have revealed a roster of patrons who were interested in funding both the expansion of existing religious monuments and the creation of new ones. While not a complete roster nor an exact representation of the actors involved on a day-to-day level, the extant evidence does reveal a lens from which we may begin to re-consider the administrative and economic history of one large Buddhist saṃgha during Buddhism’s formative years. I have presented several demographics which have either shifted over time—sometimes dramatically— or remained consistent. I argue that the information gleaned from this fragmented archive of historical records, both small and large, are representative of larger trends in how the Buddhist saṃgha with its administrators were viewing society at large and how they may have been 24 navigating their own financial requisites. GROUP Local Nuns Local Women Local (all) Nuns Women (all) Δ DONOR % 87% 62% 37% 21% 16% TRAJECTORY Decrease Decrease Decrease Decrease Decrease Table 14: Demographic Decreases during the 1st c. BCE GROUP Non-Local Men Non-Local Nuns Non-Local (all) Non-Local Women Men (all) Δ DONOR % 72% 55% 39% 32% 31% TRAJECTORY Increase Increase Increase Increase Increase Table 15: Demographic Increases during the 1st c. BCE GROUP Non-Local Monks Monks Local Men Local Monks Δ DONOR % 10%73 3% 3% 2% TRAJECTORY Constant Constant Constant Constant Table 16: Demographic Constants during the 1 st c. BCE To briefly summarize, we can recap the major demographic shifts in patronage across what is two approximately two Generations, or approximately 30-50 years.74 Decreasing demographics included women, local donors, nuns, local nuns, and local women. Of course, many of these groups overlap, as a single local nun donor would count towards all these categories. Besides the general trend of decreasing numbers of local donors, the most shocking demographic which all but disappears from the historical record are local nuns who are reduced to just 1% of the extant donor population by Generation 2. There was an intentional effort by whoever oversaw raising money for the monumental construction projects to target populations that were not local, probably because the local population may have been tapped out of their 25 expendable funds at the end of Generation 1’s fundraising. The increasing demographics were: men, non-local donors, non-local nuns, non-local women, and non-local men. Despite nearly all local patrons disappearing from the extant record during Generation 2, non-local women, especially nuns, managed to significantly increased their presence, therefore pointing towards a rather surprising premise regarding gender and the economic history at Sanchi: that the inclusion of wealthy, non-local prominent women was healthy for the financial well-being and solvency of the Buddhist institution. Further, when coupled with the fact that, at least according to the data at hand, women in general were the largest single self-identifying demographic during Generation 1, it seems rather clear that female economic power was extremely important for the existence of Sanchi throughout the 1st century BCE and beyond. Additionally, some demographics remained the same. Those were the monks, local monks, non-local monks, and local men. The remarkable consistency in percentages for all the male categories suggests that the patronage network was exceedingly committed to maintaining a donor community of composed of under 10% local monks, which begs the inevitable question of ‘why?’ since one might expect that wealthy, influential male monastic Buddhists would be, on average, the wealthiest and most influential community within society. If the overarching goal of the Sanchi patronage network during the 1st century BCE—as it might be the goal of any and all patronage networks regardless of the time period or purpose of the institution—is to increase the network’s net efficiency by squeezing out more donations from their patrons than before the hypothesis might be that the saṃgha would target men more than women and monks more than nuns simply because of a preconceived prejudice—however true or untrue—that these communities would be ‘where the big money’ exists. However, what we find with this dataset is 26 not a patronage network that is actively seeking to exploit any of the male demographics due to their inherent—if artificially constructed—value but rather we seem to have found a patronage network intent on maintaining their base followers and donors while willing to take risks on increasing the overall financial contributions from groups that may not be as socially respected, such as non-local nuns. The important meta-trends suggested by the material presented above are twofold: 1.) by the end of the 1st century BCE, the Buddhist saṃgha at Sanchi was focusing on raising funds primarily from but not exclusively non-local sources; and 2.) male demographics remained largely unchanged or increased. The implications of these two trends supplements some of what was previously known about the historical reality of early Buddhism and how it may have developed as an institutionalized religion of material cultural products instead of a religion of material cultural disengagement and strict renunciation. The financial history of this one stūpa pilgrimage site outside the heartland of Māgadha, the Buddha’s homeland, helps to tell the story of early Buddhist during one of the most difficultto-access periods in South Asian history, especially South Asian Buddhist history. However, that story is one of economic power and primacy. Women as a self-identifying demographic significantly boosted the initial funding at Sanchi’s monuments in what has been called Generation 1 while later, non-local women successfully helped to shape the continuing direction of Buddhist material culture at Sanchi during Generation 2. Without their patronage—which here quite literally probably meant their financial resources and not theoretical encouragement— Sanchi’s monuments, replete with some of the most iconic and attractive art known in early Buddhism, may not have come into existence in the sheer gargantuan form and appearance they now take. Simply put, at the heart of early South Asian Buddhist material culture is the 27 pocketbook of the early South Asian Buddhist woman, who may have been a nun, a mother, daughter, wife, or all the above. BIBLIOGRAPHY Altekar, A. S. The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day. New Delhi, 1956. Barnes, N. J. ‘Nuns at the Stūpa.’ In Women’s Buddhism, Buddhism’s Women, edited by Ellison Banks Findly, 17-36. London, 2000. Bartholomeusz, T. Women under the Bo Tree. New York, 1994. Basant, P. K. The City and the Country in Early India: A Study of Malwa. New Delhi, 2012. Blackstone, K. R. Women in the Footsteps of the Buddha: Struggle for Liberation in the Therīgāthā. Delhi, 2000. Cabezon, J. I. Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender. Albany, NY, 1992. Chakravarti, R. ‘Merchants and Other Donors at Ancient Bandhogarh.’ South Asian Studies 11, no. 1 (1995): 33-41. Chakravarti, U. ‘Beyond the Altekarian Paradigm: Towards a New Understanding of Gender Relations in Early Indian History.’ Social Scientist, no. 8 (1988): 44. Chakravarti, U. The Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism. Delhi; New York; Oxford, 1987. Collett, A. ‘Women as Teachers and Disciples in Early Buddhist Communities: The Evidence of Epigraphy.’ Religions of South Asia 9, no. 1 (2015): 28-42. Collett, A. ‘Women in Early Indian Buddhism: Comparative Textual Studies.’ New York, 2014. Cunningham, A. The Bhilsa Topes, or, Buddhist Monuments of Central India. London, 1854. Davis, D. R. The Dharma of Business: Commercial Law in Medieval India. Delhi, 2017. Dehejia, V. ‘The Collective and Popular Bases of Early Buddhist Patronage: Sacred Monuments, 100 Bc-Ad 250.’ In The Powers of Art, edited by Barbara Stoler Miller, 35-45. Delhi; New York, 1992. Findly, E. B. Women's Buddhism, Buddhism's Women : Traditions, Revision, Renewal. Boston, 2000. Fogelin, L. An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism. New York, 2015. 28 Fogelin, L. Archaeology of Early Buddhism. Lanham, MD, 2006. Gernet, J. Buddhism in Chinese Society: An Economic History from the Fifth to the Tenth Centuries. New York, 1995. Gross, R. M. Buddhism after Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism. Albany, 1993. Hallisey, C. Therigatha: Poems of the First Buddhist Women. Cambridge, 2015. Heitzman, J. Gifts of Power: Lordship in an Early Indian State. Oxford, 1997. Horner, I. B. The Book of Discipline Vol. 1: Suttavibhaṅga. London, 1938. Kaushik, G. Women and Monastic Buddhism in Early South Asia: Rediscovering the Invisible Believers. New York, 2016. Kenoyer, J. M. ‘Trade and Technology of the Indus Valley: New Insights from Harappa, Pakistan.’ World Archaeology 29, no. 2 (1997): 262-80. Lahiri, N. The Archaeology of Indian Trade Routes Upto C.200 Bc : Resource Use, Resource Access and Lines of Communication. New Delhi, 1999. Lamotte, E. History of Indian Buddhism, Translated by Sara Webb-Boin. From the Origins to the Śaka Era. Louvain, 1988. Law, B. C. ‘Bhikshunis in Indian Inscriptions.’ In Epigraphia Indica, 31-34. New Delhi, 1940. Liu, X. Ancient India and Ancient China. Delhi, 1988. Lüders, H. ‘A List of Brahmi Inscriptions from the Earliest Times to About A.D. 400 with the Exception of Those of Asoka.’ Epigraphia Indica 10 (1912). Marshall, J. H., A. Foucher and N. G. Majumdar. The Monuments of Sāñchī. Vol. 1-3, Delhi, 1982. Milligan, M. D. ‘Five Unnoticed Donative Inscriptions and the Relative Chronology of Sanchi Stūpa II.’ Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology 18 (2015 2015): 11-22. Milligan, M. D. ‘Of Rags and Riches: Indian Buddhist Patronage Networks in the Early Historic Period.’ Dissertation, The University of Texas, 2016. Morrison, K. D. ‘Commerce and Culture in South Asia.’ Annual Review of Anthropology 26 (1997 1997): 87-108. 29 Morrison, K. D. and M. W. Hauser. ‘Risky Business: Rice and Inter-Colonial Dependencies in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans.’ Atlantic Studies 12, no. 3 (2015): 371-92. Neelis, J. Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks. Leiden; Boston, 2011. Olivelle, P. Ascetics and Brahmins. Studies in Ideologies and Institutions. London, 2011. Paul, D. Y. Women in Buddhism: Images of the Feminine in Mahāyāna Tradition. Berkeley, 1985. Poonacha, K. P. Excavations at Kanaganahalli. New Delhi, 2011. Prinsep, J. ‘Note on the Facsimiles of Inscriptions from Sanchi near Bhilsa, Taken for the Society by Captain Ed. Smith, Engineers.’ Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 6 (1837 1837): 451-63. Ray, H. P. Monastery and Guild: Commerce under the Sātavāhanas. Delhi, 1986. Rhys Davids, C. Psalms of the Early Buddhists. London, 1909. Rotman, A. Thus Have I Seen: Visualizing Faith in Early Indian Buddhism. Oxford, 2009. Roy, K. ‘Women and Men Donors at Sanchi: A Study of Inscriptional Evidence.’ In Position and Status of Women in Ancient India, edited by L. K. Tripathi, 209-23. Varanasi, 1988. Salomon, R. ‘Aśoka and the ‘Epigraphic Habit’ in India.’ In Aśoka: In History and Historical Memory, edited by Patrick Olivelle, 45-52. Delhi, 2009. Salomon, R. Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages. New York and Oxford, 1998. Schlieter, J. ‘Checking the Heavenly 'Bank Account of Karma': Cognitive Metaphors for Karma in Western Perception and Early Therāvada Buddhism.’ 43, no. 4 (2013 2013): 463-86. Schopen, G. Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks. Honolulu, 1997. Schopen, G. Buddhist Monks and Business Matters. Honolulu, 2004. Schopen, G. Buddhist Nuns, Monks, and Other Worldly Matters. Honolulu, 2014. Schopen, G. ‘On Monks, Nuns and 'Vulgar' Practices.’ Artibus Asiae 49 (1988 1988): 153-68. Shaw, J. Buddhist Landscapes in Central India. London, 2007. Shimada, A. Early Buddhist Architecture in Context. The Great Stūpa at Amāravatī (Ca. 300 Bce300 Ce). Leiden and Boston, 2012. Singh, U. ‘Sanchi: The History of the Patronage of an Ancient Buddhist Establishment.' Indian Economic & Social History Review 33, no. 1 (1996 1996): 1-35. 30 Singh, V. L. Women and Gender in Ancient India: A Study of Texts and Inscriptions. New Delhi, 2015. Sinopoli, C. M. The Political Economy of Craft Production : Crafting Empire in South India, C. 1350-1650. Cambridge, 2003. Sizemore, R. F. and D. K. Swearer. Ethics, Wealth, and Salvation. A Study in Buddhist Social Ethics. Columbia, S.C., 1990. Smith, M. L. ‘Caste as a Cooperative Economic Entitlement Strategy in Complex Societies of the Indian Subcontinent and Subsaharan Africa.’ In Cooperation and Collective Action, edited by David M. Carballo, 275-97. Boulder, 2013. Smith, M. L. ‘The Origins of the Sustainability Concept: Risk Perception and Resource Management in Early Urban Centers.’ Research in economic anthropology. 35 (2015): 215-38. Smith, M. L. ‘The Substance and Symbolism of Long-Distance Exchange: Textiles as Desired Trade Goods in the Bronze Age Middle Asian Interaction Sphere.’ In Connections and Complexity, edited by S.A. Abraham, P. Gullapalli, Teresa P. Raczek and U.Z. Rizvi, 143-60. Walnut Creek, CA, 2013. Thapar, R. Early India: From the Origins to Ad 1300. Berkeley, 2002. Tsukamoto, K. Indo Bukkyō Himei No Kenkyū (a Comprehensive Study of Indian Buddhist Inscriptions). Vol. 1-3, Kyoto, 1996. Willis, J. D. ‘Nuns and Benefactresses: The Role of Women in the Development of Buddhism.’ In Women, Religion, and Social Change, edited by Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Ellison Banks Findly, 59-85. Albany, 1985. Dehejia, ‘The Collective and Popular Bases of Early Buddhist Patronage: Sacred Monuments, 100 Bc-Ad 250.’ 2 Schopen, Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks. 3 Collett, ‘Women as Teachers and Disciples in Early Buddhist Communities: The Evidence of Epigraphy,’ pp. 28-42. 4 Prinsep, ‘Note on the Facsimiles of Inscriptions from Sanchi near Bhilsa, Taken for the Society by Captain Ed. Smith, Engineers,’ pp. 451-63. 5 Sanchi was not the only major religious center in the region. Located in a radius of about 15 kilometers around the Sanchi hilltop are innumerable Buddhist and non-Buddhist sites. Alfred Cunningham discovered four large Buddhist sites before the publication of The Bhilsa Topes. These sites are now known as Satdhara, Sonari, Andher, and Morel Khurd (previously Bhojpur). Each large subsidiary site resembles the Sanchi hilltop: one centralized, major stūpa with smaller stūpa-s and temples in proximity. 6 Additionally, Sanchi’s fertile landscape warranted the construction of several water tanks and 1 31 dams. Shaw, Buddhist Landscapes in Central India. The local agricultural community may have relied on the water stored at Sanchi to grow crops and maintain their lifestyles through a mutually symbiotic relationship with the Buddhist monastic community. Ibid., pp. 252-3. Dams and tanks dating to the last centuries BCE were key features in the relationship between the monastic Buddhists on the hilltops and the farmers below. Irrigation canals were built for distribution. Regarding control structures, Shaw says: ‘The dams are usually pierced by a stream channel at their deepest point…the natural drainage point for the dam catchment […] masonry remains, attesting to some kind of monumentalized control structure, have been found in the feeder streams of the four highest dam sites [of Sanchi, Devrajpur, Morel Kala, and Ferozpur].’ Ibid., pp. 239-40. Put simply, the monks could have provided religious services and water as the laity provided donations, food, and labor. Fogelin, Archaeology of Early Buddhism. Therefore, a mutually dependent relationship formed between the monastic Buddhists on top of the hill and the laity below. 7 Sanchi was not without competition, as at least one pre-existing tradition already discovered the fortunes of residing between Vidisha and Ujjain. Sometime before most stone monuments were built at Sanchi, the Heliodorus pillar in Vidisha was raised. This freestanding monolithic pillar records the erection of a garuḍa-dhvaja, or ‘Garuḍa emblem,’ by Heliodorus the Greek from Takṣaśilā. Heliodorus was a brāhmaṇical devotee, sent by the mahārāja Antialkidas. This early brāhmaṇical inscription clearly shows that Vidisha was already associated with the Vasudeva, the devadevasa, or ‘god of gods.’ The Heliodorus pillar evidences Vidisha’s non-Buddhist importance before, or at the same time as, the widespread creation of stone Buddhist monuments on the Sanchi hilltop. On paleographic grounds, the Heliodorus pillar is assigned an approximate date of c. 150 BCE. A summary of arguments may be found in Salomon Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages, p. 141, 265ff. 8 Other Early Historic period sites, such as Bharhut in Uttar Pradesh, Pauni in Maharashtra, Amaravati in Andhra Pradesh and Bodh Gaya in Bihar also display many of the same epigraphic features. 9 The number referred to here and throughout refers to Tsukamoto, Indo Bukkyō Himei No Kenkyū (A Comprehensive Study of Indian Buddhist Inscriptions), vol. 1-3. For reference, I will also cite Marshall and Majumdar’s inscription number as well with the abbreviation ‘MM.’ Marshall, The Monuments of Sāñchī. Therefore, the above inscription is thusly labeled: MM 289. 10 In the edition of the inscriptions, I put the line number at the beginning to indicate the order in which the words appear on the architectural piece. Some donative inscriptions appear haphazardly over two ‘lines’ for no apparent reason. This may or may not be significant. I do not believe it is, but for readers and for future investigators this could be relevant. 11 All translations are my own unless specified otherwise. 12 MM 295. 13 MM 302. 14 Although by no means an exhaustive list, the most famous open-air stūpa sites comparable to Sanchi are Bharhut, Amaravati, Nagarjunakonda, Mathura, and Bodh Gaya. For a neatly outlined early attempt to group some of these donative inscriptions. Donative inscriptions can be found in significantly lesser volumes at eastern Deccan cave sites such as Karle, Bedsa, etc., see Lüders, ‘A List of Brahmi Inscriptions from the Earliest Times to About A.D. 400 with the Exception of Those of Asoka.’ 15 Shimada, Early Buddhist Architecture in Context. 16 Poonacha, Excavations at Kanaganahalli. 32 Milligan, ‘Five Unnoticed Donative Inscriptions and the Relative Chronology of Sanchi Stūpa II,’ pp. 11-22; Milligan, ‘Of Rags and Riches.’ 18 Milligan, ‘Of Rags and Riches.’ 19 Rhys Davids, Psalms of the Early Buddhists. 20 Horner, The Book of Discipline, vol. 1. 21 Hallisey, Therigatha: Poems of the First Buddhist Women, p. x. 22 Chakravarti, ‘Beyond the Altekarian Paradigm: Towards a New Understanding of Gender Relations in Early Indian History,’ p. 44. 23 Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization, from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day. 24 Chakravarti, 'Beyond the Altekarian Paradigm'; Kaushik, Women and Monastic Buddhism in Early South Asia: Rediscovering the Invisible Believers. 25 Chakravarti, 'Beyond the Altekarian Paradigm'. 26 Paul, Women in Buddhism: Images of the Feminine in Mahāyāna Tradition;Gross, Buddhism after Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism. 27 Willis, ‘Nuns and Benefactresses: The Role of Women in the Development of Buddhism’; Bartholomeusz, Women under the Bo Tree; Blackstone, Women in the Footsteps of the Buddha: Struggle for Liberation in the Therīgāthā. 28 Cabezon, Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender; Findly, Women's Buddhism, Buddhism's Women: Traditions, Revision, Renewal; Collett, ‘Women in Early Indian Buddhism: Comparative Textual Studies.’ 29 Smith, ‘Caste as a Cooperative Economic Entitlement Strategy in Complex Societies of the Indian Subcontinent and Subsaharan Africa.’; ‘The Substance and Symbolism of Long-Distance Exchange: Textiles as Desired Trade Goods in the Bronze Age Middle Asian Interaction Sphere.’; ‘The Origins of the Sustainability Concept: Risk Perception and Resource Management in Early Urban Centers,’ pp. 215-38. 30 Morrison, ‘Commerce and Culture in South Asia,’ pp. 87-108; Morrison and Hauser, ‘Risky Business: Rice and Inter-Colonial Dependencies in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans,’ pp. 371-92. 31 Sinopoli, The Political Economy of Craft Production: Crafting Empire in South India, C. 13501650. 32 Kenoyer, ‘Trade and Technology of the Indus Valley: New Insights from Harappa, Pakistan,’ pp. 262-80. 33 For hints of economic thought in Buddhist texts from South Asia, the most comprehensive work was done by Sizemore and Swearer, Ethics, Wealth, and Salvation. They collected a number of essays by prominent scholars reflecting on the notion of wealth and its ethical relationship to Buddhism. Chakravarti has sifted through the Pāli Canon for hundreds if not thousands of different types of references to reinterpret the role of gahapati-s and brāhmaṇa-s in the formation of Buddhism in social terms, emphasizing landowning and resource production. Chakravarti, The Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism. The gahapati-s were very likely a wealthy land-owning group who invested considerable resources into commercial endeavours. Gahapati-s also likely held many political and social responsibilities that led to their esteemed place in high culture during the Early Historic Period. Ibid., pp. 65-93. Bailey and Mabbett’s The Sociology of Early Buddhism synthesized a plethora of textual sources to comment on the relationship between Early Historic period urban-based economies and their accompanying agricultural sectors. A prodigious and important recent article by Schlieter explored the concept of Buddhist karma and its hypothetical relationship to ‘heavenly bank accounts’ overturned longstanding misconceptions pertaining to the 17 33 metaphor of karma as a type of other-worldly currency. Schlieter, ‘Checking the Heavenly 'Bank Account of Karma': Cognitive Metaphors for Karma in Western Perception and Early Therāvada Buddhism,’ pp. 463-86. Understanding such metaphors and their implications undoubtedly influences how historians might potentially view the economics of Buddhism on the ground. Finally, Gregory Schopen’s many essays on the various economic, social, and legal aspects of the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya demonstrate the this-worldly nature of monastic Buddhist legal codes and how they may impact everyday Buddhist practice. Schopen, Buddhist Monks and Business Matters; Buddhist Nuns, Monks, and Other Worldly Matters. Similarly, for Hinduism, Don Davis’ learned presentation of medieval Hindu law in business and economic terms signals a renewed scholarly interest to investigate economic thought and history in ancient and medieval South Asia beyond Buddhism. Davis, The Dharma of Business: Commercial Law in Medieval India. 34 Ray, Monastery and Guild: Commerce under the Sātavāhanas. 35 Rotman, Thus Have I Seen: Visualizing Faith in Early Indian Buddhism, p. 12. 36 Ray, Monastery and Guild. 37 Heitzman, Gifts of Power: Lordship in an Early Indian State; Lahiri, The Archaeology of Indian Trade Routes Upto C.200 Bc: Resource Use, Resource Access and Lines of Communication; Thapar, Early India: From the Origins to Ad 1300; Fogelin, The Archaeology of Early Buddhism; Fogelin, An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism. 38 Fogelin, An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism, p. 7. 39 Epigraphy has also been used in a similar fashion—often combined with archaeological and/or textual datasets—to construct and explore larger, important historical arguments about the economics along the ancient Silk routes between South Asia, Central Asia, and East Asia. Liu, Ancient India and Ancient China; Gernet, Buddhism in Chinese Society: An Economic History from the Fifth to the Tenth Centuries; Neelis, Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks. Xinru Liu argued that long-distance luxury trade between South Asia and China between 0 and 600 CE was centered on luxury and prestige goods, often silk in exchange for the so-called saptaratna (‘seven jewels’), which were gold, silver, beryl, crystal, red precious stones, coral, and pearls. Not coincidentally, it was Buddhist literature which valorized these same precious goods as exceptional donations while Buddhists, in practice, used the very same items as offerings in reliquary enshrinement practices. According to Liu’s analysis, it was ‘Buddhist values’ which ‘sustained the demand for certain commodities,’ although the nuance of the conclusion is debatable. Liu, p. 175. Neelis, p. 23. The Buddhist spiritual milieu may have been an excellent conductor for such long-distance trade and transmission because the Buddhist concept of merit, exemplified through dāna (‘charity’), shares many traits with goods, services, and money through its ability to be earned, traded, or accumulated in exchange for something akin to salvation Rotman, Thus Have I Seen. 40 Ray, Monastery and Guild. 41 Patrick Olivelle found that renunciation as a phenomenon was, since the very beginning, always on the fringes of society. He summarized: ‘Although the historical development of the Vedic religion may explain certain of its aspects, renunciation erupted into the religio-cultural tradition of India as a totally new and unique phenomenon. It represented an anti-structure to the society of that time, a total rejection and the reversal of the value system of the world. Precisely for this reason, it was never totally assimilated into the structures of orthodox society or integrated into the framework of the orthodox doctrine of society. Orthodox thinkers were always ill at ease in dealing with renunciation, so foreign not only to their way of life but also to their framework of thought.’ Olivelle, Ascetics and Brahmins, p. 70. 34 Ibid. Salomon, Indian Epigraphy. 44 Although this is not always the case. At the Early Historic Period site of Bandhogarh is a group of private donations recording the gifts of merchants only. There is little that could be called religious about these inscriptions other than the fact that their style was likely derived from the same styled donations at Sanchi and elsewhere. It is also possible that they were donations to a small religious site that has now vanished. Chakravarti, ‘Merchants and Other Donors at Ancient Bandhogarh,’ pp. 33-41. 45 Salomon, Indian Epigraphy, pp. 110-26. 46 Milligan, ‘Five Unnoticed Inscriptions.’; ‘Of Rags and Riches.’ 47 Milligan, ‘Of Rags and Riches.’ 48 Lamotte, History of Indian Buddhism. 49 Chakravarti, The Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism. 50 Lüders, ‘A List of Brāhmī Inscriptions’. 51 Salomon, ‘Aśoka and the ‘Epigraphic Habit’ in India.’ 52 Law, ‘Bhikshunis in Indian Inscriptions.’ 53 Schopen, ‘On Monks, Nuns and 'Vulgar' Practices,’ pp. 153-68. 54 Singh, Women and Gender in Ancient India : A Study of Texts and Inscriptions. 55 Kaushik, Women and Monastery Buddhism in Early South Asia. 56 Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization. 57 Marshall, Foucher and Majumdar, The Monuments of Sāñchī. 58 Singh, ‘Sanchi: The History of the Patronage of an Ancient Buddhist Establishment,’ pp. 1-35; Basant, The City and the Country in Early India: A Study of Malwa. 59 Marshall, Foucher and Majumdar, The Monuments of Sāñchī. 60 Basant, The City and the Country in Early India. 61 Barnes, ‘Nuns at the Stūpa.’ 62 Schopen, ‘On Monks, Nuns and 'Vulgar' Practices.’ 63 Dehejia, ‘The Collective and Popular Bases of Early Buddhist Patronage’. 64 Milligan, ‘Of Rags and Riches.’ 65 Roy, ‘Women and Men Donors at Sanchi: A Study of Inscriptional Evidence.’ 66 Collett, ‘Women as Teachers and Disciples in Early Buddhist Communities: The Evidence of Epigraphy.’ 67 Marshall, Foucher, and Majumdar, The Monuments of Sāñchī. 68 Lüders, ‘A List of Brāhmī Inscriptions’. 69 Milligan, ‘Five Unnoticed Inscriptions.’; ‘Of Rags and Riches.’ 70 Prinsep, 'Note on the Facsimiles of Inscriptions from Sanchi near Bhilsa'; Cunningham, The Bhilsa Topes. 70 MM 244. 71 MM 83. 72 MM 106. 73 The actual percentage of total went from ~8% to ~7% but the change is nearly completely insignificant statistically as this demographic remained virtually consistent for our analytical purposes. 74 Milligan, ‘Of Rags and Riches.’ 42 43 35