Vihāra

• 1. A Word on the Map

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  Vihāra is the Sanskrit and Pāli word for a dwelling, and most often it names a Buddhist monastery. The Indian state of Bihar takes its own name from this word, because Buddhist monasteries once stood there in such numbers. A term for a place to stay ended up on the map of a modern state. In the earliest Pali texts, the word was even broader. It could describe any arrangement of space or facilities for living.

  How did a word that loose become the name of a building with a fixed plan? Who first paid for monks to have roofs, and why did rulers and villagers keep paying? What did a vihara look like when it was carved out of a cliff? And why could a gift from a king split a monastic order in two? The answers run through caves, courtyards, royal courts and rival monasteries.

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• 2. Ashoka's Two Journeys

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  In the 3rd century BCE, the emperor Ashoka's court knew two kinds of royal journey, and one was called a vihara yatra. These were travel stops built around enjoyment, pleasure and hobbies such as hunting. Their counterpart was the dharma yatra, a journey of religious purpose and pilgrimage. According to Lahiri, Ashoka converted to Buddhism and then began dharma yatras around the middle of the 3rd century BCE, replacing the hedonistic royal outings.

  Ashoka also left the earliest recorded gift of immovable property for monastic purposes in any Indian inscription. The recipients were the Ajivikas, not the Buddhists. Johannes Bronkhorst argues that this gift put competitive financial pressure on every tradition, including the Hindu Brahmins. That pressure may have pushed viharas to develop as shelters for monks. It may also have turned the Hindu ashrama idea into agraharas, which were Hindu monasteries.

  Gifts of shelter usually came with revenue from nearby villages. The villagers worked for the cave residents and supplied food and services. A 1st-century CE inscription at Karle donates a cave and a nearby village. In Bronkhorst's quotation, the gift was "for the support of the ascetics living in the caves at Valuraka Karle without any distinction of sect or origin". Buddhist texts from Bengal, written centuries later, used the terms asrama-vihara and agrahara-vihara for their monasteries.

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• 3. Caves Before Bricks

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  In and around Bihar stands a group of residential cave monuments that all date to before the common era. Their style reflects Maurya architecture. Some carry inscriptions in Brahmi script that confirm their antiquity, though the writing was probably added to caves that already existed. Cave monasteries for Ajivikas, Buddhists and Jainas are dated to centuries before the common era. The rock-cut cave viharas of the 2nd century BCE have roots in the Maurya Empire period.

  The oldest layer of Buddhist and Jain texts describes the Buddha, the Jain Tirthankaras and sramana monks living in caves. If those records, which come from oral tradition, are accurate, cave residence reaches back to at least the 5th century BCE. Allchin and Erdosy point to the legend of the First Buddhist Council, set just after the death of the Buddha. It places the monks in a cave near Rajgiri, which dates the legend to pre-Mauryan times. The same scholars, however, date the square courtyard ringed by cells to the Mauryan period.

  Earlier homes for Ajivikas, Buddhists, Hindus and Jains were probably built outside rock cliffs from temporary materials, and they have not survived. Buddhist canonical texts name five kinds of dwelling fit for monks, called Pancha Lenani. They are Vihara, Addayoga, Pasada, Hammiya and Guha. Only the Vihara, meaning the monastery, and the Guha, meaning the cave, endure.

  During the rainy season, the wandering monks of the Sangha stayed in temporary shelters, a practice linked to vassa. Buddhist ideas of rebirth and merit held that feeding a monk earned merit, and so did sheltering him. Rich lay devotees acted on that belief and created sumptuous monasteries.

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• 4. The Standard Plan

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  By the 2nd century BCE, builders had settled on a standard plan, and it produced most of the Buddhist rock-cut caves. A roughly square hall, or probably an open court in built examples, gave onto a number of small cells. Rock-cut cells often had stone platforms shaped as beds and pillows. The front wall held one or more entrances and often a verandah. The Ajanta Caves, Aurangabad Caves, Karli Caves and Kanheri Caves each contain several viharas.

  Later builders added a fairly small shrine room in the back wall facing the entrance, often reached through an antechamber. Early shrines held stupas. Later ones held a large sculpted Buddha, sometimes with reliefs on the walls. The verandah, and occasionally the main hall, might also carry sculpture. Paintings were perhaps more common but rarely survive. Caves 2, 10, 11 and 17 at Ajanta are among the exceptions.

  The substantial remains of very early viharas are almost all rock-cut, mostly in north India and the Deccan. That is an accident of survival. Built viharas of stone or brick were probably at least as common everywhere, and the norm in the south. Later rock-cut viharas often rose up to three storeys, so built ones probably did too.

  Once a vihara held a central image, it took over the role of the chaitya worship hall, and chaityas eventually stopped being built. This happened even though the shrine room usually offered no path for pradakshina, the ritual of walking around a sacred object.

  Cave 5 at Ellora and Cave 11 at Kanheri break the pattern with very low platforms running most of the length of the hall. They were probably used as some mix of dining benches, study desks and beds. Labels such as "dining-hall" and "Durbar Hall" at Kanheri rest on no good evidence.

  Cave 11 at the Bedse Caves is a small 1st-century vihara with nine cells inside and originally four around the entrance. It has no shrine room. Elaborate gavaksha and railing carving surrounds the cell doors. Its rounded roof and apsidal far end make it resemble a chaitya hall.

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• 5. Where the Buddha Moved In

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  At Jaulian, Kalawan in the Taxila area, and Dharmarajika in Gandhara, viharas with a central shrine of devotional Buddha images date to about the 2nd century CE. Behrendt suggests they may have served as models for 4th-century monasteries such as those at Devnimori in Gujarat. Clay and bronze Buddha statues were found there, though it is unclear whether the statues are later. Behrendt writes that these sites "must have been the architectural prototype for the later northern and western Buddhist shrines". He lists Ajanta, Aurangabad, Ellora, Nalanda and Ratnagiri among them.

  That view follows a model in which northwestern influence and the Kushana era of the 1st and 2nd centuries CE triggered Buddhist art and monastery design. Susan Huntington notes that this model, from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is increasingly questioned. Buddha images from before the Kushana era have turned up outside the northwest. She also cites "archaeological, literary, and inscriptional evidence", for example from Madhya Pradesh, as further grounds for doubt.

  Devotional worship of the Buddha can be traced to the Bharhut monuments, dated between the 2nd and 1st century BCE. The Krishna or Kanha Cave, Cave 19 at Nasik, has a central hall with connected cells and is generally dated to about the 1st century BCE.

  The first stone viharas imitated the timber buildings that probably came before them. Inscriptions on stone and copper plates show that Buddhist viharas were often built together with Hindu and Jain temples. The Gupta Empire era saw many viharas raised, including some at Ajanta. Certain viharas known from texts and inscriptions can no longer be found, probably lost to natural causes or war.

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• 6. Rules and Rivals

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  The Vinaya Pitaka, called the basket of monastic discipline, is the part of the Pali canon devoted to life in the viharas. As more people joined the monastic sangha, senior monks adopted a code of discipline known in the canon as the Vinaya texts. The texts mostly cover sangha rules. Each rule is preceded by a story about how the Buddha came to lay it down, and followed by explanation and analysis. According to those stories, the Buddha devised the rules one at a time as he met behavioral problems or disputes among his followers.

  Every major early Buddhist tradition kept its own variant of the code. A major vihara appointed a vihara-pala. This officer managed the vihara, settled disputes, determined the consent of the sangha and its rules, and pressed holdouts to accept the consensus.

  Three influential monastic fraternities can be traced. The Mahavihara founded by Mahinda was the oldest. In the 1st century BCE, King Vattagamani donated the Abhayagiri vihara to a monk he favored, and the Mahavihara fraternity expelled that monk. In the 3rd century CE, King Mahasena gave the Jetavana vihara to an individual monk, and the same expulsion followed.

  The Mahinda Mahavihara gave rise to the orthodox Theravada tradition. The Abhayagiri monks were rejected and criticized by the orthodox, and they proved more receptive to unorthodox ideas. They nurtured the Mahayana tradition. The Jetavana monks wavered between the two camps and blended their ideas.

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• 7. Universities of the Pala Age

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  At Nalanda, in the early medieval era, thousands of students studied inside a vihara. By then, viharas had become important institutions and parts of Buddhist universities. Tibetan sources name five great mahaviharas in the Pala period in ancient Magadha, modern Bihar, and in Bengal. Vikramashila was the premier university of the era. Nalanda was past its prime but still illustrious. The others were Somapura, Odantapura and Jagaddala.

  According to Sukumar Dutt, the five formed a network supported and supervised by the Pala state. Each had its own seal and operated like a corporation, serving as a center of learning. Other notable Pala monasteries included Traikuta, Devikota, identified with ancient Kotivarsa and modern Bangarh, and Pandit Vihara.

  Somapura Mahavihara in Bangladesh, mostly from the 8th century, held 177 cells around a huge central temple. Shalban Vihara in Bangladesh, another built monastery, had 115 cells. Its lower brick walls have been excavated. It lies at Mainamati in the Comilla district, and its plan has four ranges of cells round a central court with a cruciform temple at the centre. A seal found at the site names the founder as Bhavadeva, a ruler of the Deva dynasty.

  Between 1971-72 and 1974-75, the Archaeological Survey of India and the University of Burdwan excavated a monastic complex at Monorampur in the Bardhaman district of West Bengal. It belongs to the early medieval period. At Jagjivanpur in the Malda district, excavators found the Nandadirghika-Udranga Mahavihara, dated to the 9th century. Nothing of its superstructure survives, but cells face a rectangular courtyard. Circular corner cells are a notable feature, and the layout is believed to resemble Nalanda.

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• 8. Words and Wanderers

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  In Jain monastic literature, vihara names a temporary refuge for wandering monks or nuns during the annual Indian monsoons. Modern Jain monks still wander from town to town, except during the rainy season, which is called chaturmasya. Today the word vihara refers to the wandering itself, which reverses the old meaning of a place to stop.

  In Thailand, the wihan is a building within a wat, set apart from the main ubosot, the ordination hall, and it enshrines a Buddha image. Often it serves as a sermon or assembly hall where ceremonies such as the kathina take place. In Theravada viharas, the Buddha image is considered sacred once monks formally consecrate it. Local kings built monasteries as Buddhism spread through Southeast Asia.

  The word travelled with other spellings. Khmer says vĭhéa. Burmese says wihara, but the native Burmese word kyaung is preferred. Malay borrowed it as biara, which covers a monastery or any non-Muslim place of worship. In Punjabi, vehra is an open space inside a home. In performance contexts it could mean a theatre or playhouse. Medieval inscriptions gloss it as a "dwelling, waiting place", from vi-har, meaning to construct. It contrasts with araṇya, the forest.

  Korea, Japan, Vietnam and China use a different word. The Japanese tera, the Modern Korean Chǒl, the Jurchen Taira and a reconstructed Old Chinese form all mean Buddhist monastery. They seem to derive from the Aramaic dērā, dairā or dēr, which comes from a root meaning "to live together". Central Asian translators of Buddhist scriptures, such as An Shigao or Lokaksema, may have carried the word to China.

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