Monasteries, Shrines and Society: Buddhist and Brahmanical Religious Institutions in India in their Socio-Economic Context
By Birendra Nath Prasad
Summary
The reviewed book examines the socio-economic roles of Indian religious institutions, focusing on Buddhist monasteries and Brahmanical temples. It critiques earlier research for prioritizing political dimensions and over-relying on literary sources, advocating a balanced approach integrating archaeological evidence. The work explores the decline of Buddhism and rise of temple-centric activities during India's early medieval period, challenging traditional narratives that attribute decline solely to external factors like Islamic invasions or Brahmanical hostility. Instead, it highlights institutional failures in monastic-societal linkages as key. The book includes regional studies on Vidarbha, Samatata-Harikela, and Orissa, emphasizing micro-level analyses to understand monastic interactions with agrarian and trade networks. It argues for re-evaluating Marxist frameworks that link Buddhism's decline to agrarian or maritime trade failures, noting its persistence in regions like Central Asia and Bengal. The author stresses the need to corroborate textual and archaeological sources to analyze monastic practices and their societal impact, offering a more nuanced understanding of religious institutions' functional evolution and regional dynamics.
Conclusion
This document highlights the complex socio-economic dynamics behind the decline of Buddhism and rise of Brahmanical institutions in early medieval India, challenging earlier narratives that overemphasized political factors or external influences like Islamic invasions. By integrating archaeological evidence with literary sources, the work underscores the importance of monastic institutions' functional roles in agrarian and trade networks, particularly in regions like Bengal, Sindh, and Gujarat. It argues that earlier scholarship's reliance on textual data and macro-level analyses created imbalances in understanding these institutions' social integration and regional adaptability. The volume's regional case studies, such as Vidarbha and Samatata-Harikela, demonstrate how localized factors—including trade patterns, cultural shifts, and community linkages—played pivotal roles in religious transformation. Ultimately, the research advocates for a more nuanced, source-balanced approach to study India's religious history, emphasizing the need to move beyond monolithic explanations and explore micro-level interactions between monastic systems and their socio-economic contexts.