IPPEN CHISHIN

Cuevas, Bryan J. Predecessors and Prototypes: Towards a Conceptual History of the Buddhist Antara
bhava. Numen 43,
no. 3 (1996): 263302.
Evans-Wentz, W. Y., and Kazi Dawa Samdup, eds. and trans.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1927). New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Kritzer, Robert. Antara
bhava in the Vibha
sa
. No
tom Damu
Joshi Daigaku Kirisutokyo
Bunka Kenkyojo Kiyo
(Maranata)
3, no. 5 (1997): 6991.
Kritzer, Robert. Ru
pa and the Antara
bhava. Journal of Indian
Philosophy 28 (2000): 235272.
Lati Rinbochay, and Hopkins, Jeffrey, trans. Death, Intermediate State, and Rebirth in Tibetan Buddhism. Ithaca, NY: Snow
Lion, 1979.
Teiser, Stephen F. The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism. Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1994.
Wayman, Alex. The Intermediate-State Dispute in Buddhism.
In Buddhist Studies in Honor of I. B. Horner, ed. L. Cousins,
Arnold Kunst, and K. R. Norman. Dordrecht, Netherlands,
and Boston: Reidel, 1974.

BRYAN J. CUEVAS

IPPEN CHISHIN
Ippen Chishin (12391289) was an itinerant monk
who popularized Pure Land Buddhist faith in rural areas of Japan during the Kamakura period (11851333).
His teachings emphasized the doctrine of Other Power
(tariki, reliance on the saving power of AMITA
BHA Buddha alone), the practice of dancing while chanting
Amita
bha Buddhas name (nenbutsu odori), and the
distribution of paper tallies to confirm ones connection to Amita
bha Buddha. Today Ippen Chishin is
revered as the founder of the Jishu
(Time) denomination in Japan.
See also: Japan; Kamakura Buddhism, Japan; Pure
Land Buddhism; Pure Land Schools
WILLIAM M. BODIFORD

ISLAM AND BUDDHISM

The historical meeting between the various powerful
states that drew political legitimacy from either Islam
or Buddhism was a violent one. The Arab conquest of
Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan) in 696 C.E., in

380

which a mosque replaced a monastery, and the Turkic

destruction of the important Buddhist monasteries of
Na
landa
and Vikramas
la in India in 1202, are widely
recognized as the end of Indian Buddhism. Similar
devastation was glorified in a Turkic folksong recorded
in Al-Kashgaris twelfth-century dictionary, which revels in the desecration of Buddhism during the tenthcentury Karakhanid attack on the Uygur Buddhist
kingdom of Turfan along the SILK ROAD. With the Inner Asian imperial revival of Buddhism in the twelfth
century, however, the direction of religious violence was
reversed. The Kara Khitais launched pogroms against
Muslims, and Hleg, a supporter of the Tibetan Phag
mo gru pa, killed the Abbasid Caliph in 1256.
Of course there were exceptions to these norms of
imperial violence. Kabu
l Sha
h converted to Islam only
in 814. When BA
MIYA
N and Gandha
ra were seized in
711, Buddhism and Islam coexisted. When Sind was
conquered it was decreed that Buddhists, like Christians and Zoroastrians, should be taxed though not
killed, as was the case during the reign of Zayn alabid
n in Kashmir (14201470). Early Arabic sources
also note that sometimes Buddhists and Muslims were
military allies. Ta
rana
thas Rgya gar chos byung (History of Buddhism in India, 1608), in accord with other
Indian sources, notes that Buddhists rejoiced in the
Muslim destruction of Hinduism and records that
Buddhists even acted as agents and intermediaries for
the Turkic assault on Magadha in central India. The
BuddhistMuslim encounter has manifested a full
range of experiences and dialogues.
Arabic translations of Indian Buddhist works reflect
the earliest engagement between Buddhism and Islam.
These include the animal tales of the Kal
l la wa-Dimna
(Kalila and Dimna, ca. eighth century), based on the
Pacatantra (Five Treatises, ca. 300 C.E.), and the Kita
b
Bilawhar wa-Yu
da
saf (The Book of Bilawhar and Yudasaf, ca. seventheighth century), a compilation from
various sources of the Buddha biography that became
the prototype for the Christian legend of Barlaam and
Josaphat. Although these translation projects ceased by
the mid-ninth century, Muslim scholars continued to
describe and interpret the Buddhist tradition. In the
tenth century, Ibn al-Faq
h and Ya
qu
t described in
detail the Buddhist architecture, ritual, and doctrine
as witnessed at Nowbahar in Afghanistan. Similarly,
Jayha
n
s description of Buddhism in his now lost
gazetteer Kita
b al-masa
lik (The Book of Roads) provided material on Buddhist thought for both Maqdis

and Gard
z
in their brief descriptions of religion in
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BUDDHISM

ISLAM

India. More detailed descriptions of the dharma, as

well as the standard categorization of Indian religions,
are found in Ibn al-Nad
ms Fihrist (Catalogue, 987)
and Shahrasta
n
s Kita
b al-milal wa-n nih al (The Book
of Religions and Faiths, 1125), works superseded only
by Rash
d al-D
ns Tar
l kh al-Hind (History of India,
ca. 1305/6), which explores at length the Buddha and
Buddhist concepts of time as presented by the Kashmiri monk Kamalasri (dates unknown).
Muslim engagement with Buddhism, however, was
not limited to theological and historical works. Islamic
architecture derived inspiration from and appropriated localized Buddhist forms across Asia. And in
opposition to Islams well-known iconoclasm, an
extensive Muslim trade in Buddhist icons flourished
through the tenth century. Indeed, over time the term
bot (idol, presumably deriving from Buddha) lost its
religious significance and became a clichd metaphor
of idealized beauty in Persian poetry.
Extant sources for the Buddhist interpretation of
Islam are more limited. The main source is the
KA
LACAKRA (Wheel of Time), a work composed in India during the early eleventh century at a time of increased Muslim migration, primarily Shiite groups
fleeing persecution from the Sunni caliphate. The work
outlines Muslim dietary laws, circumcision, marriage,
the nature of god, and gods relationship to humanity.
Why there are not more Buddhist interpretations of
Islam is uncertain, though the retreat of Buddhism as
a culturally dynamic force certainly played a role.
This retreat was premised on many factors
economics, politics, and most importantly, the growing fusion between Hindu and Buddhist thought, particularly among the laity. A syncretism fueled by
Advaita Veda
nta and tantric thought also played a role
in South Asias Islamization, as Sufi saints appropriated indigenous Indian religious discourses in transmitting and developing Islam in South Asia. Thus, for
a time these traditions engaged one another, and holy
sites came to share narratives of sacrality. The most famous of these narratives concerns the footprint on a
mountain in Sri Lanka traditionally attributed to the
Buddha. In the Akhba
r al-S
l n wa-l-Hind (Stories about
China and India, 851), this site was identified as the
place where Adam descended after his expulsion from
paradise. In the fourteenth century, Ibn Batu
ta noted
that Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists all regarded
Adams Peak as holy.
Yet amid this South Asian religious multiplicity,
Buddhism became intellectually isolated, losing both

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OF

BUDDHISM

AND

BUDDHISM

royal and lay support. Chinese pilgrims to India witnessed this diminishing interest and recorded the concurrent disappearance of Buddhist temples and
monasteries. Similarly, artistic remains from the period reflect a systematic shift of royal patronage from
Buddhism to Hinduism. Although the Turkic destruction of two monasteries in 1202 is held up as the
ultimate demise of Buddhism in India, seventy-eight
Hindu temples were also destroyed in the creation of
an Indo-Muslim state. Islam was a threat, but Buddhisms inevitable absorption into the amorphous
doctrinal and ritual category of Hinduism was a
greater one.
This transition occurred so seamlessly in Southeast
Asia that when Islam finally arrived, the pre-Hindu
layer of Buddhist religious history and culture was
largely forgotten except in its famous monuments. In
Java, Buddhism eventually merged into tantric
Saivism, only to be displaced by Islam after royal conversion in the fourteenth century, a trajectory also
found in Kashmir. More often, Buddhist sources wrote
of fearing Hinduization rather than defeat by Muslim
forces. The nexus of Buddhisms imminent internal
absorption into Hinduism and the external threat
posed by Islam is most eloquently captured in the central eschatological myth of the Ka
lacakra. This narrative refashioned the Hindu myth of Visnus final avatar
Kalkin Cakrin into a Buddhist apocalypse where
Kalkin rides out of Shambhala, the mythical kingdom
where the Buddhas final teachings are preserved, and
kills the Muslims who have taken over the world, ushering in an age of pure dharma. This vision of Islamic
perfidy has influenced Buddhist representations of
Islam up to the present time.
In modern Buddhist states, these negative images
are often framed in terms of such categories as ethnonational identity, politics, and demographics, with at
times devastating consequences, as witnessed in Burma
(Myanmar), where, in Arakan State, a predominantly
Muslim area, the Burmese government has carried out
policies of institutionalized discrimination including
forced labor, restrictions on freedom of movement, and
destruction of mosques. Elsewhere, however, dialogue
between the traditions is again progressing as Muslim
and Buddhist states and citizens grapple with the religious consequences of migration and conversion.
See also: Indonesia and the Malay Peninsula; Nationalism and Buddhism; Persecutions; Politics and Buddhism; Thailand

381

ISLAM

AND

BUDDHISM

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382

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JOHAN ELVERSKOG

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