In Buddha’s Footsteps

Aung Lwin Oo
Irrawaddy Online: 6 September, 2006

Burmese monks in India hope “spiritual tourism” campaign will lead pilgrims to their door.

Towering more than 50 meters over the ruined temple buildings stands a pyramid-shaped, elaborately carved shrine. Beside the shrine is a papal tree—no ordinary tree but a descendant of the one under which Buddha is said to have achieved enlightenment. This is the famous Maha Bodhi tree, one of many places of pilgrimage associated with Buddha in this area of Bihar state in eastern India. The area, known as Bodh Gaya, is 96 km from Patna, capital of Bihar state.

A temple compound has arisen over the centuries around the Maha Bodhi tree, on the banks of the Narinjara river, and in 2002 it was declared a World Heritage site. The present Maha Bodhi temple is said to have been founded by the emperor Asoka, who ruled much of today’s northern India in the second century BC. Asoka embraced Buddhism after renouncing warfare and despotic rule, and history says he ordered the construction of the Maha Bodhi temple to honor Buddha.

The temple underwent much expansion and renovation over the centuries, and a marble inscription records that “Burmese greatly contributed” in restoration work in 1883. A Burmese temple was added to the ensemble and was given the name Myanmar Vihar, meaning “Burmese adobe.” The temple has a community of Burmese monks, led for the past 30 years by abbot Baddanta Nyarnainda, who joined the monastery while on a Burmese state-sponsored mission to India’s Assam state.

Bihar is one of India’s poorest states, and Baddanta Nyarnainda and his fraternity of monks have a hard task maintaining the monastery. In 1999 it was robbed by thieves who raided several other foreign-run monasteries in the region.

Donations from visiting monks, scholars and pilgrims from India keep the monastery running. State support is non-existent, unlike the Burmese monastery in Lumbini, Nepal, which receives some funding from Naypyidaw. In the early years of Baddanta Nyarnainda’s ministry, Gen Ne Win’s government cut deeply into the Myanmar Vihar monastery’s budget by imposing restrictions on issuing passports for Burmese pilgrims.

The military regime maintained the restrictions until the late 1980s, when Burmese pilgrims were again allowed to visit Bihar. Up to 400 a year now make the pilgrimage—the present regime leader, Snr-Gen Than Shwe, and his wife paid homage at the monastery during a state visit to India in 2004. They presented the monastery with a bronze Buddha image, which now sits under the Bodhi tree.

Until recently, Burmese pilgrims were allowed to spend up to 600,000 kyat (US $450) on Bihar trips, which are organized by Rangoon travel agencies under the auspices of Burma’s Ministry of Religious Affairs. Little money remains from the official allowance for pilgrims to make donations to the Myanmar Vihar monastery, laments Baddanta Nyarnainda.

Despite the shortage of funds, the Myanmar Vihar temple complex is expanding to accommodate up to 150 pilgrims, who come to make merit and meditate in retreats or under the sacred Bodhi tree. The winter months are a time of pilgrimage and the temple compound is then crowded with pilgrims, most of them from Burma and from Burmese communities elsewhere in India.

Some Burmese are ordained as monks at the Myanmar Vihar temple. An exiled Burmese man from New Delhi, who joined the temple community, said he knew of many countrymen who wanted to be monks at Maha Bodhi, if only for a short period.

Monks also travel from Burma to Bodh Gaya in order to engage in religious studies there.  “Mostly, monk scholars are self-funded or funded by laymen,” said a young Burmese monk, Agga, who is studying at Nalanda University, in central Bihar, where Buddha is said to have preached to his disciples. Nalanda attracts Burmese monks because of a syllabus that includes courses in the Pali language, used for Theravada Buddhist studies.

“Burmese monks who come to India to study intend mainly to practice religious activities in the sacred grounds and to improve their skills in English and Pali,” said Baddanta Nyarnainda.

Ironically, according to Agga, Burmese monks already proficient in Pali pick up more Hindi, the Indian language, than English while studying in the region, where local people hardly use English. Aknowledge of Hindi, however, helps in the study of Pali, and vice versa, according to Burmese monks studying at Nalanda.

Up to 10,000 students attend Nalanda University, located in a city of great historical interest 90 km southeast of Patna. Other major Buddhist sites in the region include Rajgir, Kushnagar, Sarnath and Lumbini in Nepal. Buddha is said to have lived and died in Rajgir and Kushnagar, while scholars agree that he was probably born in Lumbini.

About 40 temples supported by foreign countries and their pilgrims dot the Bodh Gaya landscape. Apart from Burma, Buddhist pilgrims from Bhutan, China, Japan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tibet and Vietnam travel regularly to the area and support their own temples there. In the colonial era of the British Raj there were only four foreign-supported temples, and Myanmar Vihar was one of them, according to Baddanta Nyarnainda.

Later this year, the Indian government is to launch a tourism campaign with the slogan “Come to India, Walk with Buddha,” marking the 2,550th anniversary of the birth of Buddha. Indian tourism official Amitabh Kant says the campaign intends to promote “spiritual tourism” aimed at “uplifting the soul and finding peace by following in the footsteps of the Buddha.” The monks at Myanmar Vihar hope that the path will lead thousands of “spiritual tourists” to their temple—but, in view of the difficulties they still face, it’s doubtful whether many Burmese will be among them.