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BOOKS
Clueless In Buddha Country
An American writer follows Hsuan Tsang and reaches,
well, Red Ford
By Gillian Wright
This had the makings
of a great tale. Richard Bernstein is a highly respected author, journalist
and a book critic for the New York Times. He has studied Chinese and China,
and was Time magazine's first bureau chief in Beijing. Here, he follows
the footsteps of the seventh century Buddhist monk and scholar Hsuan Tsang,
who, when he was in his mid-20s, set out from China, traversed India and
studied in Nalanda, the fount of Buddhist knowledge at that time. It was
over 15 years before Hsuan Tsang returned home, bringing with him knowledge
of every aspect of India. Bernstein's aim through his journey is to pay
homage to the monk's achievements, but unlike Hsuan Tsang, he came to
India without study. This is his downfall.
Bernstein's entire preparation for India seems
to have been a glance at a Lonely Planet and a chat with Tavleen Singh.
He makes no further serious attempt to find anyone who can help him understand
today's India or the India Hsuan Tsang saw over 1,300 years ago. As a
result, he has undermined his credibility with cliches, want of understanding,
and dyslexia with Indian names.
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Wisdom Trek: Hsuan Tsang, 603-662
A.D.
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The misspellings are ubiquitous, from Srinigar
to Potiala and from Gorokhpur to Indori, from the superfast Sabhathi Express
to Delhi's historic Red Ford. At one point, he takes a photograph of a
Mr Yado (Yadav), carefully writes down his address and, later, posts it
to Merjaphur (Mirzapur). He wonders if it ever arrived. So do I.
It's sad that in 2001, someone of Bernstein's
standing is still writing that Kolkata's "most famous image is a
black hole", and that it "summons up images of medieval plagues
and suffering". He must also have been using an old guide book, as
he opines that the only place to stay, apart from the Grand and the Tollygunge
Club, is Sudder Street. Varanasi, which for his compatriot, the scholar
Diana Eck, was "The City of Light" is for him merely "a
city of the dead". He doesn't talk to Veerbhadra Mishra, the mahant
of the Sankatmochan temple, about his struggle to keep the river clean.
Even Clinton was impressed by Mishra, but Bernstein knows that no religious
leader is interested in keeping the Ganga clean as he's consulted Tavleen
Singh. He dismisses the late Kashi Naresh, who devoutly maintained the
centuries-old Ram Lila at Ramnagar, as a "has-been maharaja".
Perhaps he was wise in refusing an interview for fear of being misquoted.
Hinduism is beyond Bernstein's ken-he is a self-confessed
"secular non-Buddhist sceptic". He hasn't realised that it is
more than simply "a religion of worldly renunciation". One of
the greatest acts of renunciation that Hsuan Tsang witnessed was when
King Harsha Vardhana gave away his worldly goods at a ceremony he performed
every five years at Prayag. This is one of many incidents not mentioned
in the book. Neither, if you go by the book's map, did Hsuan Tsang go
anywhere near Allahabad.
Bernstein is interested in Buddhism but that
interest is intellectual. Thankfully, he learns through the course of
his journey that Buddhism, like Hinduism, is a religion of experience.
He is blessed with a light touch and an ability to laugh at himself. But
it would have helped him if he had understood that while China is "an
extraordinary universe, a domain of everything", India is one too.
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