Chapter 23: The Buddha Country Without Buddhas

When he heard that he was going to Bihar on a tourist bus of a domestic Buddhist pilgrimage group, Wang Qiu initially thought that he was going to be accompanied by a group of monks and nuns. It was only after getting into www.biquge.info the car that I found that there didn't seem to be a single bald religious person in the Buddhist pilgrimage tour group that the health commissioner of Baiquanyi had helped, only a group of fashionably dressed old men and women, curiously taking pictures with cameras. In addition, there are a few middle-aged successful people with bloated bodies and wearing suits or floral shirts, and as soon as they get in the car, they feel out the tablet and press it crackling - Wang Qiu originally secretly praised them for never forgetting their work, but when they looked closely, they found that they were all playing "Angry Birds...... Later, after carefully studying the leaflet given to him by Bai Quanyisai, he realized that the organizer of the tour group was actually a vegetarian association.

Overall, this tour group should be considered quite high-end in India, with an air-conditioned imported tourist bus and a local guide who is fluent in English and crappy Chinese...... In addition, there are even two waiters on the bus, wearing crisp uniforms, standing at the door of the bus with a smile to welcome passengers, help them with their luggage, and courteously hand over towels to wipe sweat.

Then, from the beginning of the distribution of the car in the evening, the two attendants were like flight attendants in a civil airliner, constantly delivering all kinds of things to the tourists in the car, first taking out several newspapers and travel magazines for tourists to choose from, then sending each tourist a bottle of mineral water, and then a small lunch box for each person, including a spoon, a bag of biscuits, a piece of sugar, two tea bags and a plastic cup; Immediately, while delivering boiling water, he asked if the dinner on the car needed a vegetarian or non-vegetarian meal; After the inquiry, the food was delivered, the non-vegetarian meal was chicken curry and sweet rice, and the vegetarian meal was vegetarian burger and juice, all of which were served on a dinner plate, similar to an airplane meal on an airplane, heated out in a microwave oven on the car. Finally, there is ice cream and chewing gum.

The process takes about two hours, during which the waiters are constantly busy, and all the visitors have to do is sit in their chairs, choose their food, and nod and smile...... A feeling of being a superior person suddenly came to me......

After paying 1,000 yuan per person, the tour leader generously said that Wang Qiu and the others could also enjoy the same service.

Since this is a Buddhist pilgrimage tour, the vast majority of tourists choose vegetarian meals, but Wang Qiu insisted on meat, because he always felt that hamburgers could not be worth dinner, and at the same time, it was difficult to imagine what kind of vegetarian burgers were - can a burger without meat filling be called a hamburger?

Then, he saw the successful man in the seat next to him who had ordered a vegetarian meal, frowning and getting two vegetarian burgers, one with fried potato cakes sandwiched with bread, and the other with mung bean curry paste stuffed in the bread. Served with some shredded vegetables and tomato sauce, and wrapped in a piece of tin foil in a fake form, it looks like an indigenous person saw the space shuttle and built one out of wood himself, thinking that it should also be able to pass through the atmosphere.

And the two veggie burgers tasted just as bad – the successful man shook his head and threw it away after just one bite.

Obviously, such a strange vegan burger would not be sold outside of India...... But Wang Qiu's non-vegetarian meal was not much better, the sweet rice seemed to be made with mutton fat and sugar, half-cooked, and very greasy, and he had to shamefully leave a lot left.

By the time dinner was over, it was getting dark. Because it is a night drive, there is no scenery to see, if it is a highway in the country, it is estimated that the passengers are already drowsy, but in India, it is bumped so that they can't sleep at all - speaking of which, most of northern India is an endless plain, even the small mountain Baodu (the majestic Himalayas are far at the other end of the horizon) are rare to see, and the land is quite strong, it should be easy to build roads, At least it was much easier than the Chinese being forced to build high bridges and dig tunnels in the ravines of Yungui in the southwest. But in fact, the road system of modern India seems to be the same as the Indian Railway, which was left by the British, and even the so-called "highways" driven by tourist buses are actually just ordinary roads with hardened roads, and some sections of the road are even dirt roads. Wandering sacred cows can be seen on every stretch of the road, and there are very few completely enclosed highways, and the highways on the viaduct are even more legendary...... There are many toll booths, one every dozen kilometers, but unfortunately the road surface is extremely poorly maintained, and there are potholes everywhere......

The bus of the Buddhist pilgrimage tour group stopped and drove like this, never getting up quickly, and finally stopped in a place similar to a gas station service area, and the team leader announced that everyone would get off the bus and go to the toilet, and then rest on the bus for the night, and continue to set off tomorrow morning - it seems that the organizers of the tour group probably knew that with the road conditions in India, it is impossible to let passengers fall asleep on the moving bus.

So, a car of tourists got off the car one by one, but when they really got to the toilet door, they couldn't help pinching their noses together: because the toilet at the gas station was very dirty, the floor inside was full of wet water stains, the white tiles had turned into a strange yellow color, and there were all kinds of weird liquids and insects floating on the water stains, as well as unwashed fecal residues, and the toilet seat on the flush toilet was covered with dirty shoe prints, presumably the tourists who used it to avoid filth. I had to step on the toilet seat directly.

In the face of such a situation, the men can barely endure it, but the female tourists, especially those who wear long skirts, are in a difficult situation, if they go to the toilet like this, I am afraid that the skirt will become an absorbent rag, and even stain the filth on the ground...... Wang Qiu didn't know how they solved it in the end, but when he came back, he found that Shizuka Jukawa didn't get out of the car at all.

“…… Uh, don't you have to go down to make it easier? You can't hold it all night! Wang Qiu asked curiously.

Then, the blonde stupid and cute female school doctor with an amazing bust gave Wang Qiu an embarrassing answer.

“…… It's okay, people have long expected this situation, and they have put adult diapers under their skirts in advance......"

- It should be said that although Shizuka-sensei Jukawa has a bust that seriously exceeds the average level of Asians, is she really worthy of being Japanese in terms of thinking?

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Although this tour bus is not a sleeper car, as long as the seat is folded down, it becomes a reclining chair, which can be used overnight.

- After using the toilet, some of the tired passengers put on eye masks and earplugs, wrapped themselves in blankets distributed by the tour guide and began to fall asleep. Other passengers who still can't sleep put on Bluetooth headsets and watch the promotional video of Indian Buddhist history and culture on the car TV with relish.

In East Asian countries, almost as long as an individual knows, Buddhism originated in India. But we also know that Buddhism in India entered the age of the end of the Dharma nearly a thousand years ago. The era when Tang monks went to the west to learn scriptures was already the last glory of Indian Buddhism, and then it was all the way downhill until it collapsed - by the time Wu Chengen wrote "Journey to the West" in the Ming Dynasty at the latest, the land of Tianzhu was actually undesirable.

Speaking of the origin of Buddhism in India, we have to start with the birth of Indian civilization - the meaning of the term India was originally the meaning of "moon", in the Western Han Dynasty of China, India was called "body poison", to the Eastern Han Dynasty was also called "Tianzhu", until the Tang Dynasty was determined to be called India. Ancient India is one of the four major ancient civilizations in the world at the same time as China, ancient Egypt and the two river basins, with a long history of nearly 4 to 5,000 years.

However, unlike the 5,000-year-old tradition of Chinese civilization, Indian civilization has had several interruptions, and even the meaning of the concept of "Indian" has changed dramatically – just as no one would classify modern Americans with ancient North American Indians.

Unlike the yellow race in East Asia, the original inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent were already mixed, with African Negro people, Australian black brown people, Mongolian people like our Chinese, and Dravidian people from the Mediterranean.

Before the Aryan invasions, the Dravidian tea people were the first civilized race in India, and established a series of glorious cities in the Indus Valley, such as the famous ruins of Mohenjo Daro, as well as several mysterious ancient capitals submerged by deserts and seas.

Around 1500 B.C., the "Aryans", a nomadic people who were originally active in the steppes of Central Asia and Central Europe, drove horse-drawn chariots across the Great Plains of Central Asia and invaded ancient India from the Hindu Kush Pass. They conquered the Dravidian tea city-states that originally inhabited the Indus Valley, occupied the plains of northern India, and drove the Dravidian tea people and other tribes to the mountains and forests to the south or north.

At the same time, the Vedic culture of the Aryans was introduced to India, and many Aryan kingdoms with strict class divisions began to be established.

The word "Veda", derived from Sanskrit, originally means knowledge, and it is a great scripture created by the Aryans during their long migration. It is all-encompassing in terms of content, even the holy books of religion are a collection of historical materials, literature and poetry, which can be said to be the culmination of Aryan wisdom, and finally even became synonymous with Indian culture. Modern Indians often claim that their culture belongs to the Vedic culture.

Over time, Aryan society formed three groups, the first being a group of warriors, known as Kshatriyas, and the second being a group of priests, known as Brahmins, which fought for the political rights of the Aryans, as a result of which the Brahmins became the final victors. The third group of Aryans was the agricultural and handicraft producers, and they were the Vaishyas. Subsequently, many of India's indigenous populations were also incorporated into the Aryan social system, becoming the fourth group of Aryan society, the Shudras – generally speaking, the Vaishyas were often farmers, merchants, artisanal owners, and landlords of some industry, while the Shudras were farmers who worked on farms or hired laborers in handicraft workshops.

After the Aryan conquest, in order to maintain the status of the Aryans, the Aryans gradually established many social and religious institutions and rules, so that this class distinction was permanently fixed. The caste system arose - in order to exercise long-term and effective domination over the indigenous peoples of India, the Aryans created primitive Brahmanism based on the content of the Vedas, and according to the teachings of the scriptures, divided the people into four classes: the first born from the mouth of the creator god Brahma, the sacrificial class, the Kshatriya born from the arms, the Kshatriya as the royal class, the Vaishyas born from the thighs, the common class, and finally the Shudras born from the feet.

Because of the contrast between the light skin of the Aryans the conquerors and the dark skin of the natives, skin color was a factor in the caste system. The word "caste" that we are familiar with was actually a name coined by Portuguese travelers who came to India in the 16th century. In India, caste is actually called Varna, and the word Varna is a very straightforward reference to "skin color", and its original meaning has nothing to do with class or status.

However, after 3,500 years, the skin color of the Aryans is also changing, because under the tropical sun, only the dark-skinned race can survive better, the light-skinned skin is easy to die due to skin diseases and be eliminated, the black component in the Aryan gene is inherited and strengthened, and the light-colored component is constantly eliminated, so in modern times, it is no longer possible to judge the caste of Indians by skin color, some noble Brahmins may also have dark skin, and some untouchables may also have a whiter complexion - However, in general, as in China, the whiter the skin in India, the better, especially in some Indian upper-class clubs, those Indian gentlemen and ladies wearing suits and leather shoes and long dresses are no different from white Westerners except for the curry smell on their bodies, and if you look at the photos, you will even mistake them for Europe......

Regardless of whether the skin of the Brahmins is black or white, these four classes are so divided that no one can be provoked to cross them, and anyone who tries to break this gap will be severely punished by the other classes. As a result, each class has its own functions, and intermarriage is not allowed, and each caste system has its own ethnic group, and there is no chance of rising out. For example, a Shudra, who was born into the slave class, remained a Shudra for life, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not change his status. He could not find any other job than a menial job.

If he did cross this class and go to a nobler job that did not fit his identity, his original class would in turn accuse him of destroying this sacred order. In more serious cases, they may even be expelled from the group, or relegated to a lower class, becoming an untouchable class called "Ayukaba", commonly known as untouchables.

The first untouchables in India were some of the conquered natives who engaged in filth work, such as butchers, cleaners, funeral workers...... It's already enough to be looked down upon. What's worse is that the high-caste Indians, especially the Brahmins, are very attached to the concept of "cleanliness", so the untouchables are considered untouchable - the ancient Indians believed that diseases could be transmitted not only through contact, but even through the air, so not only could they not come into contact with people of the higher castes, but they even had to keep a considerable distance from the upper castes to avoid being occasionally seen by the people of the upper castes.

Because of this strict caste system, the norms of behavior dominated the actions of the people, and over time, the empty religious regulations became a reality, and they still have a profound influence on the thinking and life of every Indian. The biggest characteristic of the caste system is its stubbornness and stagnation, and there is no transformation between castes, and in East Asia, the Middle East and Europe, people at the bottom of society can become high-ranking officials and nobles through their own efforts and opportunities, and they can become cardinals and imams, but it is basically impossible in India. What's worse is that after the establishment of the caste system, it not only permanently fixed the status of all social strata, but also fixed their occupations, restricting social interactions and marriage between various castes.

The classification of the four castes, Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras, is only a very broad concept, equivalent to the ancient Chinese scholars, farmers, and merchants. And under these four categories, there are more subtle divisions in Indian society. As in other societies in the ancient world, it is an Indian tradition that families who do a certain job will do such work for generations, and when the number of members of the family gradually increases with the reproduction of generations, they become a social group, which is called jat in India, which translates to subcaste, or subcaste, and each family in each sub-caste does the same work, establishing close social ties with each other and forming a social community. Subcastes are basically generated by occupation, so there are many of them, and there are now more than 3,000 subcastes in India. For example, Mahatma Gandhi in India, the surname Gandhi shows the meaning of the subcaste to which he belongs, Gandhi means vegetable and fruit merchant, or vegetable seller.

Like the caste, a person born in a certain jat belongs to this jat for life, and theoretically cannot be changed, and must operate the profession that the jat runs, and eat the food that belongs to the jat - so when Gandhi wanted to be a lawyer and enter politics, he was expelled for a time and worked as a pariah for a while, but when he became a Mahatma in the Congress party, he was respectfully invited back by the elders. Traditionally, even within the four castes, different jats could not intermarry, and a jath could only marry a jat, even if they were all Brahmins or Kshatriyas. However, in modern society, this kind of regulation is not strictly enforced.

It can be seen that traditional India is an extremely rigid and rigid society, and every Indian is a screw in this society, and everyone is determined from birth because his surname is a hereditary occupation - for example, there is an Indian surname Halvi, which means "candy maker". Then they have to make candy to make a living, and if they don't have their own shop, they can only work in a candy store. Because as soon as those bosses saw him, they thought: Oh, his surname is Harvey, and he was born to boil sugar and make tea, I'm afraid he can't do other jobs, okay?

In this way, to put it nicely, traditional Indian society is like a big zoo, a self-sufficient, hierarchical, and orderly zoo. Everyone has their own role and enjoys their place. There are craftsmen, cowherds, and landlords, and the confectioners make sweets, the cowherds herd, the warriors go to war, and the untouchables pick up the dung...... Everyone's fate is determined by their surname, and if you change careers, you have to be reincarnated.

To put it mildly, this rigid and completely immobile social structure not only deprives the Indians at the bottom of the ladder and discourages them, but it is also very disadvantageous to the supreme ruler, because in this way, human resources cannot flow between the various industries - not only can they not promote cronies from the bottom of the people, but even within the same class, they cannot be deployed.

A prince of ancient India, if he wanted to develop metallurgy, he could not get a farmer to become a blacksmith; If you want to develop seafaring, you can't turn a craftsman into a sailor – all Indians have a hereditary profession, and they form well-structured societies or hereditary trade unions, like those of Western European Jews, and are supported by religion. Whether a ruler wants to dissolve a group or to stuff new people into it, it is very difficult, if not impossible, as difficult as a Reformation.

For example, in the early nineteenth century, during the era of British colonial rule in India, because the hand-woven Indian cotton cloth was defeated by the British cotton spinning industry after the Industrial Revolution, the bones of Indian spinners after starvation were covered in the countryside of Calcutta - it was not that these Indian cotton spinning craftsmen were too stupid and stubborn, and they refused to change their careers until they starved to death to make money, but India's extremely rigid and rigid traditional social system, so that they basically could not change their careers, if a certain industry was eliminated as a whole, The only way out for practitioners is likely to be collective suicide......

In short, India's caste system, while guaranteeing generations of wealth for Brahmins and Kshatriyas, discouraged the working people at the bottom, made them addicted to religion because they could not see hope in this world, and also made it difficult for the supreme ruler to centralize power, leading to the long-term fragmentation of the state.

For this reason, in the late Spring and Autumn Period in China, about the same time as Lao Tzu and Confucius, in modern Nepal, there was a prince of the Shakyamuni tribe who was originally named Gautama, that is, the Buddha Shakyamuni, because he was dissatisfied with the religious theory of Brahmanism, after hard practice, he enlightened under a Bodhi tree on the bank of the Ganges, and finally founded Buddhism, playing the banner of equality of all beings, trying to change this long-standing status quo.

Unfortunately, under the advocacy of the Buddha, Buddhism fought with Brahmanism for thousands of years, and even became the state religion for a time with the support of famous kings such as Emperor Ashoka and King Jieri - just as Qin Shi Huang needed the support of Legalism to unify China, these Indian kings also needed a new set of ideas that could break the shackles of caste, adapt to the imperial structure, and replace Brahmanism, so they chose to support Buddhism.

However, with the long-term division of India and the resurgence of Brahmanism to become a more widespread Hinduism, Buddhism in India eventually declined, and by the time of British colonial rule in India, Buddhism had largely disappeared in India itself. It was not until 1947, after the founding of modern India, that monks from China, Japan, and Southeast Asia returned to India to preach, reviving the incense of Indian Buddhism.

However, the decline of Buddhism in India does not mean that the Buddha Shakyamuni has been forgotten by the Indians. Because even in the eyes of Hindus, Buddha Shakyamuni is still a very great deity, regarded as one of the ten incarnations of the supreme god of Hinduism, Vishnu. In Indian primary school textbooks, children are told to "...... We live in a beautiful country. The light of the Buddha blesses the land. The Ganges River is our mother river and is the holy water on which human beings, animals and plants depend. Thank the gods for allowing us to be born on this land......"

Therefore, many of the relics left by Buddha Shakyamuni have been protected by Hindus and have survived to modern times, rather than being left with only half a wailing wall to worship like the Jews...... For example, the Bodh Gaya, where Wang Qiu and the others went this time, was the place where the Buddha attained enlightenment.

- Chandra, who may have contracted the T-virus in another world. Mr. Shukla, where he is currently located...... Social Community. Subcastes are basically generated by occupation, so there are many of them, and there are now more than 3,000 subcastes in India. For example, Mahatma Gandhi in India, the surname Gandhi shows the meaning of the subcaste to which he belongs, Gandhi means vegetable and fruit merchant, or vegetable seller.

Like the caste, a person born in a certain jat belongs to this jat for life, and theoretically cannot be changed, and must operate the profession that the jat runs, and eat the food that belongs to the jat - so when Gandhi wanted to be a lawyer and enter politics, he was expelled for a time and worked as a pariah for a while, but when he became a Mahatma in the Congress party, he was respectfully invited back by the elders. Traditionally, even within the four castes, different jats could not intermarry, and a jath could only marry a jat, even if they were all Brahmins or Kshatriyas. However, in modern society, this kind of regulation is not strictly enforced.

It can be seen that traditional India is an extremely rigid and rigid society, and every Indian is a screw in this society, and everyone is determined from birth because his surname is a hereditary occupation - for example, there is an Indian surname Halvi, which means "candy maker". Then they have to make candy to make a living, and if they don't have their own shop, they can only work in a candy store. Because as soon as those bosses saw him, they thought: Oh, his surname is Harvey, and he was born to boil sugar and make tea, I'm afraid he can't do other jobs, okay?

In this way, to put it nicely, traditional Indian society is like a big zoo, a self-sufficient, hierarchical, and orderly zoo. Everyone has their own role and enjoys their place. There are craftsmen, cowherds, and landlords, and the confectioners make sweets, the cowherds herd, the warriors go to war, and the untouchables pick up the dung...... Everyone's fate is determined by their surname, and if you change careers, you have to be reincarnated.

To put it mildly, this rigid and completely immobile social structure not only deprives the Indians at the bottom of the ladder and discourages them, but it is also very disadvantageous to the supreme ruler, because in this way, human resources cannot flow between the various industries - not only can they not promote cronies from the bottom of the people, but even within the same class, they cannot be deployed.

A prince of ancient India, if he wanted to develop metallurgy, he could not get a farmer to become a blacksmith; If you want to develop seafaring, you can't turn a craftsman into a sailor – all Indians have a hereditary profession, and they form well-structured societies or hereditary trade unions, like those of Western European Jews, and are supported by religion. Whether a ruler wants to dissolve a group or to stuff new people into it, it is very difficult, if not impossible, as difficult as a Reformation.

For example, in the early nineteenth century, during the era of British colonial rule in India, because the hand-woven Indian cotton cloth was defeated by the British cotton spinning industry after the Industrial Revolution, the bones of Indian spinners after starvation were covered in the countryside of Calcutta - it was not that these Indian cotton spinning craftsmen were too stupid and stubborn, and they refused to change their careers until they starved to death to make money, but India's extremely rigid and rigid traditional social system, so that they basically could not change their careers, if a certain industry was eliminated as a whole, The only way out for practitioners is likely to be collective suicide......

In short, India's caste system, while guaranteeing generations of wealth for Brahmins and Kshatriyas, discouraged the working people at the bottom, made them addicted to religion because they could not see hope in this world, and also made it difficult for the supreme ruler to centralize power, leading to the long-term fragmentation of the state.

For this reason, in the late Spring and Autumn Period in China, about the same time as Lao Tzu and Confucius, in modern Nepal, there was a prince of the Shakyamuni tribe who was originally named Gautama, that is, the Buddha Shakyamuni, because he was dissatisfied with the religious theory of Brahmanism, after hard practice, he enlightened under a Bodhi tree on the bank of the Ganges, and finally founded Buddhism, playing the banner of equality of all beings, trying to change this long-standing status quo.

Unfortunately, under the advocacy of the Buddha, Buddhism fought with Brahmanism for thousands of years, and even became the state religion for a time with the support of famous kings such as Emperor Ashoka and King Jieri - just as Qin Shi Huang needed the support of Legalism to unify China, these Indian kings also needed a new set of ideas that could break the shackles of caste, adapt to the imperial structure, and replace Brahmanism, so they chose to support Buddhism.

However, with the long-term division of India and the resurgence of Brahmanism to become a more widespread Hinduism, Buddhism in India eventually declined, and by the time of British colonial rule in India, Buddhism had largely disappeared in India itself. It was not until 1947, after the founding of modern India, that monks from China, Japan, and Southeast Asia returned to India to preach, reviving the incense of Indian Buddhism.

However, the decline of Buddhism in India does not mean that the Buddha Shakyamuni has been forgotten by the Indians. Because even in the eyes of Hindus, Buddha Shakyamuni is still a very great deity, regarded as one of the ten incarnations of the supreme god of Hinduism, Vishnu. In Indian primary school textbooks, children are told to "...... We live in a beautiful country. The light of the Buddha blesses the land. The Ganges River is our mother river and is the holy water on which human beings, animals and plants depend. Thank the gods for allowing us to be born on this land......"

Therefore, many of the relics left by Buddha Shakyamuni have been protected by Hindus and have survived to modern times, rather than being left with only half a wailing wall to worship like the Jews...... For example, the Bodh Gaya, where Wang Qiu and the others went this time, was the place where the Buddha attained enlightenment.

- Chandra, who may have contracted the T-virus in another world. Mr. Shukla, where he is currently located......