At a time when the concepts of nation-states, national borders and identity cards did not exist, the oasis town of Dunhuang in the Gobi Desert in northwest China was a melting pot of four great cultures: Chinese, Indian, Greek and Persian.
Traders, travellers, scholars, monks, missionaries from far and wide would navigate unforgiving landscapes and rough weather to reach this town, which eventually became a hub of Buddhism in Central Asia. Among those who made the journey was an Indian Buddhist monk by the name of Dharmakṣema.
Buddhism had spread to China from India through the ancient Silk Road and was thriving in the country in the 4th century CE. When word got back to India that there was a demand in China for a deeper understanding of Buddhist doctrines, Dharmakṣema knew he was the person to help.
“Possessed of both eloquence and intelligence, Dharmakṣema was broadly learned in both monastic and secular affairs and was well versed in mainstream Buddhist texts,” says the Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, edited by Robert E Buswell Jr and Donald S Lopez Jr.
Much of what is known about Dharmakṣema is thanks to the research of Jinhua Chen, a professor of East Asian Religions at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. In a 2004 paper titled The Indian Buddhist Missionary Dharmakṣema (385-433): A New Dating of His Arrival in Guzang and of His Translations, Chen translated Dharmakṣema’s biography by his collaborator, the monk Daolang.
“The Indian sramana Tanmochen (Dharmakṣema) was a native of Central India and a descendant of a Brahman family,” Daolang wrote. “His natural gifts were outstanding and his understanding bright and penetrating.”
Dharmakṣema’s interest in Buddhism is believed to have begun at the age of six under his first teacher, a Hinayana monk by the name of Dharmayasas.
The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism throws some light on Dharmakṣema’s journey to monkhood. “After he met a meditation monk named ‘White Head’ and had a fiery debate with him, Dharmakṣema recognized his superior expertise and ended up studying with him,” says the dictionary. “The monk transmitted to him a text of the Mahaparinirvana Sutra written on bark, which prompted Dharmakṣema to embrace the Mahayana. Once he reached the age of 20, Dharmakṣema was able to recite over two million words of Buddhist texts.”
Many believed that Dharmakṣema was an expert at casting spells. He could apparently draw water from a rock and was later called the Great Divine Spell Master.
“Carrying with him the first part of the Mahaparinirvana Sutra that he received from ‘White Head,’ he left India and arrived in the Kucha kingdom in Central Asia,” says the Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism.
The ancient kingdom existed in what is today China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. It was once a well-populated oasis in the Taklamakan Desert.
“As the people of Kucha mostly studied Hinayana and did not accept the Mahayana teachings, Dharmakṣema then moved to China and lived in the western outpost of Dunhuang for several years,” the Princeton Dictionary says. His purpose in living in this cultural and trade hub, Daolang explains, was “Buddhist teachings”.
It was around this period that Dunhuang was becoming a major Buddhist educational centre. “Owing to the geographical location of Dunhuang, a few eminent monks in history, going to and coming from the West, not only left their footprints, but also engaged in the translation of Buddhist scriptures here, e.g. Dharmaraksa (known as Dunhuang Bodhisattva), with his disciple Zhu Facheng, Kumarajiva the great translator, who also lectured on the Buddhist sutras and whose horse was commemorated with the White Horse being built, and Dharmakṣema, the translator of Mahaparinirvana Sutra,” Chinese scholars Chai Jianhong and Liu Jinbao write in their book Dunhuang.
In the 5th century CE, when Dharmakṣema arrived in Dunhuang, pilgrims from eastern China were learning “Buddhist doctrines and stories from the graceful sculptures” in the city’s Mogao Caves. “In ancient Chinese society, ordinary people were not educated enough to read and comprehend the scripts,” Chai and Liu write. “However the Buddhist teachings portrayed on the walls were concise and vivid, and therefore easy for them to understand.”
Chai and Liu add, “The painters [painted] profound Buddhist doctrine and philosophy into popularised visual form, adopting familiar and adaptable methods of representation, particularly those that were suited to the acceptability and habit of the Chinese, taking into account the actual demand of ordinary people in their daily lives.”
Dharmakṣema totally immersed himself in the life of Dunhuang, living as a pilgrim and a highly respected monk. How long he spent there is not precisely known, but it must have been years given that he would have had to master Chinese to a high level to translate Buddhist texts into it.
In one telling, his reputation in Dunhuang as a scholar and sage reached Juqu Mengxun, the ruler of a regional kingdom that invaded the oasis town around 420 CE.
“After spending several years in Dunhuang, he [Dharmakṣema] went to Guzang [present-day Wuwei, Gansu], then the capital city of a regional regime known as the Northern Liang, first established by the Chinese Duan Ye and then taken over by the non-Chinese Juqu Mengxun,” Chen writes. “Under the patronage of Juqu Mengxun, Dharmakṣema engaged in a series of translation projects which resulted in a number of Chinese Buddhist texts.”
These texts included the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, Suvarnaprabhasa Sutra and the Bodhisattva Bhumi. “Dharmakṣema is also said to have been responsible for the first Chinese version of the Lankavatara Sutra, a text fundamental for the development of Chinese Chan Buddhism in its early period,” writes Chen.
Dharmakṣema’s works exerted a big impact on Buddhism in China. He would first translate texts orally into Chinese and then the monks Daolang and Huigao would assist him in writing them down. Their translations were in great demand in large monasteries and ended up spreading far and wide across China.
Biographical sources suggest Dharmakṣema left his work incomplete when he travelled to India after his mother’s death and stayed back for a while. The journey was perilous. Apart from difficult terrain and erratic weather, travellers on the old Silk Road faced the threat of armed bandits. But Dharmakṣema made it back to China and resumed his work.
Throughout his time in China, the Indian monk’s reputation for casting magic spells followed him. “The Wei Shu [Official History of the Northern and Eastern Wei, 385-550], the only secular source about Dharmakṣema, provides a very different image from that supported by his monastic biographical sources,” says Chen. “We are told that Dharmakṣema, a Buddhist monk from ‘Kashmir,’ entered Shanshan where he succeeded in seducing a royal sister called Mantoutuolin, probably thanks to his alleged skill in manipulating ghosts for medical purposes and his ability to increase women’s fertility.”
As per this story, Dharmakṣema fled Shanshan – a kingdom located near the northeastern end of the Taklamakan Desert – to the lands ruled by Juqu Mengxun. At first Dharmakṣema was treated like a sage, but when Juqu Mengxun came to know that the Indian monk was teaching sexual skills to female members of the royal house, he had Dharmakṣema tortured and executed.
There is, of course, no way to verify this account. It is a fact that Juqu Mengxun ordered the killing of the Indian monk, but many sources believe the ruler’s reasons were political, not personal.
The most widely accepted version of the killing story goes like this: Juqu Mengxun’s rival Tuoba Tao admired Dharmakṣema’s esoteric expertise and requested the monk be sent to his country. This alarmed Juqu Mengxun, who thought that his rival may try to use Dharmakṣema’s skills against him and so had the monk assassinated. The Indian monk was 48 at the time of his death.
“It is not clear how reliable this image of Dharmakṣema as a performer of black magic is, although it is not unlikely that he had some thaumaturgic skills as did many other mediaeval monks,” Chen says.
Whatever the merit of the magic and sex stories, it is undeniable that Dharmakṣema fostered a deeper understanding of Buddhism in China. He is remembered today for his translations, especially of the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, which had a great impact on the development of Chinese Buddhist thought. The concept of fóxìng or Buddha-nature – the idea that all sentient beings possess the potential to become a Buddha, or already have a pure Buddha-essence within them – first appeared in Chinese in the Indian monk’s translation of the Mahaparinirvana Sutra.
Like several other visitors from ancient India, Dharmakṣema was a cultural bridge between the two great civilisations. Sixteen centuries later, his legacy is still widely celebrated in Dunhuang, western China’s historical and cultural centre of Buddhism.
Ajay Kamalakaran is a writer, primarily based in Mumbai. His Twitter handle is @ajaykamalakaran.