[Buddha-l] The mess at Bodh Gaya

[Dan Lusthaus]

A recent PBS show on the Parthenon and the current effort to restore it
mentions that over the centuries it went from being a Greek Temple, to a
church, to a mosque, back to a church, and sundry other uses (e.g., military
barracks). It's now an "historical" landmark. In India, many sites show
explicit signs of changing hegemony. For instance, at Nagarjunakonda in
South India, Buddhists dominated from ca. 2nd-5th c., and then the Jains
took over for awhile, carving their artwork into upper levels of columns,
etc. that still have Buddhist iconography lower down; and then Saivites took
over, adding their iconography above the Jain -- kind of like archeological
totempoles. The disputes between Hindus and Muslims in India over sacred
sites have spilled over into major violence in recent decades.

In short, this is a ubiquitous phenomena, found worldwide. The Dome of the
Rock and Al-asqa mosque are literally built over the ruins of the Second
Temple in the heart of Jerusalem -- a fact the current controllers of the
area, the Palestinians, are trying to erase from the historical record. See
http://bib-arch.org/bswbKCHSTempleMount.html

Muslims built mosques over holy sites wherever they went (Central Asia,
India, Middle East, North Africa, Europe, etc.), or took over the sites and
dubbed them Muslim henceforth (Ka'aba perhaps the most famous example). But
so did everyone else.

I'm not surprised everyone chooses to single out one country as the
scapegoat for a ubiquitous activity that no one wants to own up to (that's
got a 2000 year tradition of its own). To do proper historical (and current
political) analysis of these sorts of things, one has to take account of the
political hegemony issue. Who is in control of a region? Who legally owns
religious "property"? When the ruler is himself a partisan, how does that
affect the identity of a property (e.g., if belonging to a rival tradition)?
Is there a difference between being a minority religion and a majority
religion? How did the fortunes of temples in China or Japan change over the
centuries as leadership loyalties changed? Messy, ugly story.

Dan Lusthaus


----- Original Message ----- >
> > I wonder if there had been similar ancient and on-going fights over holy
> > property in the medieval Christian or Jewish worlds, in Europe?
>
> If we consider Turkey as part of Europe, it might be helpful to recall
> the crusades. And in a prominent suburb or Europe called Israel there
> seems to be pretty much incessant fights over holy property.
>
> -- 
> Richard Hayes