[Buddha-l] Rice & Dragons

[Artur Karp]

Dear List,


While reading one of Piya Tan's essays, I came across an interesting
quotation from Edward Conze's "Buddhism. A Short History", Oxford
1980, p. VII.

Here it is:

<<In India the reaction arose in a region devoted to rice culture, as
distinct from the areas further West with their animal husbandry and
cultivation of wheat. For the last two thousand years Buddhism has
mainly flourished in rice-growing countries and little elsewhere. In
addition, and that is much
harder to explain, it has spread only into those countries which had
previously had a cult of Serpents or Dragons, and never made headway
in those parts of the world which view the killing of dragons as a
meritorious deed or blame serpents for mankinds ills>>.

Has anyone tried to develop this idea?

Best,

Artur Karp

Senior Lecturer in Sanskrit and Pali (ret.)
South Asian Studies Dept.
Oriental Faculty
University of Warsaw
Poland