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Buddha and Buddhism

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Buddha and Buddhism

Buddhism in the Malay Peninsula and Borneo, as documented in the Society’s literature, spans a vast chronological and geographical range—from seventh-century Sanskrit inscriptions in the Bujang Valley of Kedah to the institutional life of Chinese, Thai, Burmese, and Singhalese temples in Penang during the twentieth century. The evidence attests to a tradition that was simultaneously embedded in pan-Asian monastic networks and characterised by distinctive local innovations, from the unique practice of engraving Sāgaramatiparipṛcchā verses on shale bars set within stupas in Ancient Kedah [1, pp. 5] to the demographic and financial negotiations between ethnic Buddhist communities under colonial rule [2, pp. 57–88]. The material record—votive tablets, stucco sculptures, inscribed shale bars, marble temple slabs, and ritual paraphernalia—collectively demonstrates that Buddhist practice in the region was neither a passive reception of Indian models nor a uniform import, but a dynamic and locally adaptive tradition sustained over many centuries.

Epigraphic and Archaeological Evidence from Ancient Kedah

The most substantial body of evidence for early Buddhist practice in the Peninsula comes from the Bujang Valley in Kedah, where the Bukit Choras archaeological site was first reported in 1849 [1, p. 5]. Earlier interventions focused on a section of a seventh- to ninth-century stupa (a Buddhist commemorative structure), but the 2023 and 2024 excavations exposed several further sides of the structure, yielding two new Sanskrit inscriptions engraved on narrow rectangular shale bars of the Mahang formation, each bearing three verses of the Sāgaramatiparipṛcchā Mahāyāna sūtra, along with three life-sized stucco Buddha images set in the cardinal-direction recesses of the laterite platform [1, pp. 10–16]. The northern stucco Buddha, the best preserved of the three, measured 90.0 cm in height from seat to head and 71.5 cm knee-to-knee, seated in dhyāna (meditative) posture on a lotus throne [1, p. 11].

The significance of these finds extends beyond their individual merit. Together with three previously discovered Buddhist textual artefacts from the Bujang Valley, the Bukit Choras inscriptions constitute a corpus of five Sāgaramatiparipṛcchā inscriptions, a text known to survive in Sanskrit only in these Malayan inscriptions, a few Indian works that quote other passages, and two palm-leaf fragments in Gilgit/Bamiyan Type I script in the Schøyen Collection; the original Sanskrit text is otherwise lost [1, pp. 17–18]. The authors of the 2025 study demonstrate through comparative palaeographic analysis that the five inscriptions were produced by different scribes over a span from the sixth or seventh century to the eighth or ninth century, ruling out the possibility of a single exemplar or workshop [1, pp. 22–23]. The differential use of sandhi (euphonic combination of sounds) between the earlier and later inscriptions, combined with the testimony of the Chinese monk Yijing regarding Sanskrit education in Srivijaya and the later composition of the Durbodhāloka by Dharmakīrti of Suvarṇadvīpa, supports the inference of a resident monastic community with sustained textual scholarship [1, pp. 23–25].

The distinctive presentation of these verses—engraved on narrow, tapering rectangular shale bars and installed within stupas—represents a ritual practice unique to Ancient Kedah, with no parallel in India or elsewhere in South or Southeast Asia [1, pp. 5]. The authors further position the Bukit Choras inscriptions within a wider framework of intra-Asian Buddhist connectivity, comparing them with the ye dharma, ajñānac ciyate karma, and Bodhigarbhalankaralakṣa-dhāraṇī epigraphic traditions to show that Ancient Kedah was simultaneously a participant in pan-Asian ritual networks and the locus of autonomous local innovation [1, pp. 25–26]. This finding challenges earlier characterisations of the Bujang Valley as primarily a commercial entrepôt with incidental religious activity [1, p. 34].

The site’s preservation history is itself noteworthy: it was saved from quarrying in the 1980s when the Kedah state government withdrew permits and placed it under the Akta Benda Purba 1976 (Antiquities Act 1976), later replaced by the National Heritage Act 2005 (Act 645) [1, p. 10].

Votive Tablets and the Srivijayan Connection

A separate but related body of evidence for early Buddhist practice in northern Malaya consists of Mahāyāna votive tablets (pra-bimh, stamped clay discs bearing devotional images and inscriptions) recovered from limestone caves in Perlis. Alastair Lamb’s 1964 study documents the discovery and typological analysis of these objects from two caves—Gua Kurong Batang and Gua Berhala—arguing that they were manufactured locally rather than transported from India or distant Srivijayan centres [3, pp. 47–59].

The investigation was prompted by a 1961 discovery of stamped clay tablets in a small cave at Kampong Kurong Batang, made by local villagers. By the time Lamb and Lord Medway arrived in November 1961 to conduct a scientific examination, the cave had been largely despoiled—Siamese Buddhist monks had collected the remaining tablets and ground them into material for a new image [3, p. 48]. Despite this, Lamb recovered 79 identifiable tablets or fragments from Gua Kurong Batang, all made from unfired yellow clay and falling into five distinct types, the most common being a twelve-armed Avalokiteśvara with attendant figures [3, p. 50]. The cave deposit also contained shells, fish vertebrae, crab claws, charred bone, and coarse black pottery with crude sand temper, though the site’s disturbed condition made stratigraphic dating impossible [3, p. 50].

The more substantial find came from Gua Berhala, a larger cave approximately two miles north-west of Kangar, which Lamb identified as the source of earlier collections by Vaughan Stevens (c. 1895), Evans (1929), and Collings (1936) [3, p. 53]. Here the tablets were concentrated in an alcove at the back of the entrance chamber, lying on the surface of a reddish marl floor. Lamb identified at least eleven distinct types, made from both coarse reddish clay (sun-dried) and fine yellow clay (possibly lightly fired). The red clay tablets showed impressions of bamboo matting on their reverse and in some cases a red pigment, possibly haematite, on the inscribed surface. One type bore a sixteen-line inscription in a deeply recessed circular cartouche, which Coedes reported did not contain the Ye Dhamma formula [3, pp. 53–54].

A critical argument of the article concerns provenance. G. Coedes had suggested in 1927 that Type II pra-bimh might have been brought to their find-spots by pilgrims or even manufactured in India. Lamb’s evidence—identical clay deposits at the cave mouths, the extreme fragility of the unfired tablets, and the use of shared stamps across both caves—convinced him that the Perlis tablets were produced locally [3, p. 55]. The tablets from Gua Kurong Batang were made from yellow clay identical to a deposit at the foot of the outcrop, and the red clay tablets from Gua Berhala matched the material composing much of the cave floor [3, p. 55]. An appendix examines four tablets from the Palembang region in Sumatra—two flat clay discs with stamped inscriptions comparable to Gua Berhala Types 1 and 9, and two small clay stupas—raising the question of whether the Type II tradition also extends to the other epigraphically attested Srivijayan centre [3, p. 59].

An earlier and more fragmentary contribution to this field is C. O. Blagden’s 1903 note on a Buddhist votive tablet, a fragmentary clay piece bearing a tenth-century Nāgarī inscription discovered by H. Vaughan Stevens in a cave in Kedah and held in the Singapore Museum [4, p. 205]. Professor Kern of Leiden, examining a photograph, identified the script as Nāgarī of approximately the tenth century and recognised parts of the well-known Buddhist formula ye dharmā hetu prabhavā at the top, though he was unable to decipher the whole [4, p. 205]. Blagden contrasts this tablet’s Northern Indian script with other Kedah and Province Wellesley inscriptions in a South Indian alphabet, which Kern had dated to c. 400 A.D., and concludes that both Northern and Southern India contributed to the civilisation of the Malayan regions [4, p. 205]. He further argues that the Peninsular inscriptions, though few, refute Hugh Clifford’s claim that Hindu influence did not extend to the Peninsula, and that Indian influence was the most potent force in the civilisation of the Javanese and Malays [4, p. 206].

Buddhist Practice and Ritual in the Colonial Period

The Society’s literature also documents living Buddhist practice in the colonial period, though the evidence is more limited in scope. R. J. Farrer, C.M.G., recorded a Siamese Buddhist purification ceremony performed at the Residency in Kelantan in August 1918, following a lightning strike to the flagstaff that was interpreted as a spiritual portent [5, p. 261]. Farrer provides a detailed first-hand account of the ritual’s preparations and execution, including the arrangement of offerings—raw rice, cakes, fruit, grilled fish, crocodile figures cut from coconut leaves—the construction of a nearly mile-long lalang (ritual) rope threaded with white string, and the application of charmed rice paste to the household in the form of human figures [5, pp. 261–262]. The ceremony involved both Siamese Buddhist priests under the head priest ‘To Raja and a Malay bomoh (traditional healer and ritual specialist), whose roles were distinct: the priests conducted formal prayers and a final lustration, while the bomoh performed incantations, prepared bamboo cages containing roasted and raw fowls along with the rice-paste figures for disposal in the river, and carried out boundary rites involving buried sirih (betel) vials, coconut nut-crashing, and gunshots [5, pp. 262–263]. The ceremony concluded with the reconveyance of the Residency to its owners via the presentation of a sirih tray to ‘To Raja [5, p. 263].

A more extensive treatment of institutional Buddhist life is provided by B. Liow Woon Khin’s 1989 survey of nine Buddhist temples and two associations in Penang between 1845 and 1948 [2, pp. 57–88]. Liow organises his material around the Theravāda–Mahāyāna divide, examining four Thai temples, the Burmese Dhammikarama Temple, the Singhalese Mahindarama Temple, three Chinese Mahāyāna temples, and two associations. The central historical problem he identifies is the progressive absorption of non-Chinese Theravāda temples into the orbit of Chinese Buddhist patronage. Originally established to serve the spiritual needs of small Thai, Burmese, and Singhalese communities, these temples found their congregations increasingly outnumbered by Chinese devotees by the early twentieth century. Chinese New Year replaced ethnic New Year festivals, Chinese inscriptions appeared on shrine halls, and in at least one case—Wat Sawan Arun, later renamed Ang Hock Si—the temple was formally transferred from Thai to Chinese Mahāyāna management after the Japanese occupation left it without resident monks [2, pp. 57–88].

Among the Mahāyāna institutions, Kek Lok Si, described as the largest Buddhist temple in South-east Asia, received an Imperial Sanction from Emperor Kuang Hsu in 1904, reflecting the Manchu court’s shifting policy toward overseas Chinese [2, p. 71]. Its Pagoda of Ten Thousand Buddhas cost approximately $200,000 to complete between 1915 and 1930, was funded primarily by Mdm Lim Leng Cheak, and was designed in three architectural sections—Chinese, Thai, and Burmese—reflecting inter-school cooperation; the temple also received 70,000 volumes of Buddhist scriptures under the 1904 Imperial Sanction [2, pp. 71–72]. The Penang Buddhist Association, registered in 1925, attempted to present a “correct” Buddhism free from what its founders considered the superstitious malpractices of the older Pitt Street temples, yet it simultaneously operated a provident fund that attracted thousands of members more interested in financial benefit than doctrinal study; total membership grew from 540 in 1930 to 16,164 by 1936–1940, of whom 12,011 were Provident Fund subscribers [2, pp. 76–77]. The Japanese occupation emerges as a critical turning point: the PBA was compelled to pay $46,547.19 in “voluntary gifts” to the occupying forces, and the absence of foreign monks during the occupation created openings for Chinese monks to assume permanent roles in previously non-Chinese temples [2, pp. 77].

A further dimension of Buddhist connectivity is suggested by A. Grimes’ 1941 reconstruction of the maritime track of the Chinese pilgrim Fa-hsien’s voyage from Ceylon to Canton, using wind data for the equatorial region [6, pp. 76–92]. Grimes identifies Ye-po-ti most plausibly as the north-west coast of Borneo, where the south-west monsoon sets in at the end of May, matching the timing of the second leg’s departure [6, p. 78]. While the article does not discuss Buddhist institutions at the port itself, it situates the Malayan and Bornean coasts within the maritime networks through which Buddhist ideas, texts, and personnel moved across the region.

A Sanskrit Inscription from Brunei

A single but significant piece of evidence for Buddhist presence in Borneo is a Sanskrit inscription in the ancient Brunei script, found on a lotus-shaped stone at Ujong Tanjong cemetery behind the Makam di Raja. Arvind Sharma’s 1979 note offers a revised interpretation of this inscription, previously deciphered by Miss Kongkae Weeraprajak of the Thai National Library, arguing that its meaning is better understood through the eschatology of Mahāyāna Buddhism [7, pp. 99–101]. Kongkae had read the text as a wish for “goodness” to attend the “going to dust” of four beings, “as excellent as the diamond.” Sharma contends that this translation obscures the Buddhist element of the text. Drawing on the Mahāyāna concept of Pure Lands (buddha-kṣetra)—realms built of precious stones such as diamonds in which the departed hope to be reborn—he argues that the words anavara (“without badness,” i.e. pure) and vajragavucchri strongly suggest a wish for the departed to attain such a Pure Land destiny [7, p. 101]. He also notes that the syntax of Kongkae’s translation is questionable, as svasti in Sanskrit functions as an opening or closing benediction rather than a sentence-internal element [7, p. 101].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on Buddhism reveals a clear evolution in both scope and methodological sophistication. The earliest contributions—Blagden’s 1903 note on a single votive tablet and Maxwell’s 1878 article on the antiquities of Province Wellesley, of which only the title page survives in the archival record—represent the initial phase of collecting and reporting isolated artefacts without systematic contextual analysis [4], [8]. Blagden’s note, though brief, already gestures toward a broader argument about the dual Indian (Northern and Southern) origins of Malayan civilisation, a theme that would recur in subsequent scholarship [4, p. 205].

The mid-twentieth century marks a shift toward more rigorous archaeological and typological methodology. Lamb’s 1964 study of the Perlis votive tablets represents a significant advance: it extends Coedes’ 1927 Thai typological framework into Malayan territory, employs controlled fieldwork (albeit hampered by prior despoliation), and advances a specific argument about local manufacture based on material evidence [3, pp. 47–59]. The 2025 Bukit Choras study by Bujeng and colleagues represents the current state of the art, combining multi-season excavation, comparative palaeographic analysis, and explicit engagement with the historiography of Srivijayan studies to argue for a resident monastic community with sustained textual scholarship in Ancient Kedah [1, pp. 5–34].

The institutional and social history of Buddhism in the colonial period remains comparatively underdeveloped in the Society’s literature, with Liow’s 1989 Penang survey standing as the principal contribution [2, pp. 57–88]. Liow’s work is notable for its reliance on primary sources—marble inscriptions, land registry documents, court judgements, and oral histories gathered from resident monks—and for foregrounding the role of Chinese female philanthropists as the principal financial patrons of non-Chinese temples, a pattern he notes repeatedly but does not develop into a separate analytical argument [2, pp. 57–88]. The single ritual account by Farrer (1933) and the Brunei inscription note by Sharma (1979) remain isolated contributions that have not yet been integrated into a broader synthetic treatment of Buddhist practice across the region [7], [5].

A persistent historiographical tension runs through the literature: the question of whether Buddhist presence in the Malay world should be understood as evidence of active local participation in Asian monastic networks or as a secondary phenomenon attendant upon commercial and political exchange. The 2025 Bukit Choras study explicitly challenges the earlier characterisation of the Bujang Valley as primarily a commercial entrepôt with incidental religious activity [1, p. 34], while Lamb’s argument for local manufacture of votive tablets similarly resists the assumption of long-distance transmission [3, p. 55]. These interventions suggest that the field is moving toward a model in which Buddhist practice in the region is understood as both connected and autonomous—a participant in pan-Asian ritual networks while retaining distinctive local features [1, pp. 25–26].

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. V. Bujeng et al. (2025). The Bukit Choras Inscriptions and the Significance of the Sāgaramatiparipṛcchā Verses to Ancient Kedah. JMBRAS 98(2): 5–34.
  2. B. Liow Woon Khin (1989). Buddhist temples and associations in Penang JMBRAS 62(1): 57–88.
  3. A. Lamb (1964). Mahayana Buddhist votive tablets in Perlis JMBRAS 37(2): 47–59. Read on JSTOR
  4. C.O. Blagden (1903). A Buddhist votive tablet JSBRAS 39: 205–206.
  5. R.J. Farrer (1933). A Buddhist purification ceremony JMBRAS 11(2): 261–263. Read on JSTOR
  6. A. Grimes (1941). The journey of Fa-Hsien from Ceylon to Canton JMBRAS 19(1): 76–92.
  7. A. Sharma (1979). The interpretation of a Sanskrit inscription in the ancient Brunei script JMBRAS 52(1): 99–101.
  8. W.E. Maxwell (1878). Antiquities of Province Wellesley JSBRAS 1: 114. Read on JSTOR