Plundering Buddhism
In comparing and contrasting Patrick S. Bresnan's book Awakening: An Introduction to the History of Eastern Thought and the BBC video The Silk Road: Where East Met West, I found that the video goes more into depth about the history of the Silk Road whereas Bresnan focuses on the history and development of Buddhism in China. One topic is briefly covered by both, that is the city of Dunhuang and the Mogao Caves.
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| Sir Aurel Stein 1909 |
In the BBC video I learned that Sir Aurel Stein, having learned about the discovery of ancient Buddhist manuscripts and art in Dunhuang, traveled there to plunder its' riches in the name of archaeology. "You discover a solid mass of manuscript bundles...you also note that in other caves there are paintings... you take your pick having to rip them off the walls, you also take your pick of the documents... and then, you convince Abbot Wang that one hundred and thirty pounds is more than enough for all these treasures, and then you leave" (Silk 30:46). The dishonest treatment, theft and tricking of the Abbot changed my perception on the discovery of the Library Cave. It is almost a double edged sword, on one hand the items were placed in museums and properly preserved and on the other, China lost much of its' tangible Buddhist history. Though luckily, "enough remains to dazzle the eye and convince the world of Buddhist studies that in the region of the now desolate Takla Makan Buddhism once flourished" (Bresnan 379).
In regards to the archaeologists who came to China, the BBC video is a bit glib in its' view of them. "You load 29 cases of your plunder onto the backs of camels and take everything back to Britain; that as they say, is how we rolled in 1907. Aurel Stein was no worse and certainly no better than the other archaeologists" (Silk 31:30). In Bresnan's: Awakening he explains the plunder of China in a more upfront way. "With no strong government to control research in the area, free-booting self-styled 'archaeologists'... ransacked the region, plundering everything they could find. Their 'excavations' more often looked like battlefields than careful research sites" (Bresnan 379). The video above talks about Nationalistic China's opinion of these 'archaeologists' and the subsequent treatment of Sir Aurel Stein.
It was surprising to me that it unfortunately took so long to put a stop to the theft of their country's riches. "Finally, in 1920 the Chinese government moved to halt the plunder" (Bresnan 379). These so-called archaeologists,"saw China's weakness in those years as an opportunity to plunder her past" (Silk 31:45). One has to wonder what would have happened to all of those treasures had these plunderings not occurred. Would China have recognized the importance of these Buddhist treasures, or would they have been lost yet again?
Works Cited
Bresnan, Robert S. Awakening: An Introduction to the History of Eastern Thought. 6th Edition 2018 Routledge, New York
“Episode XVI: Foreign Devils Begone.” YouTube, Justin Jacobs, 12 Dec. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Nb6mlsYTXk.
Sir Aurel Stein. Photograph by J. Thomson, The Grosvenor Studios, 1909. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
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