As Prince Siddhartha of Kapilavastu, he had forsaken his rightful royal inheritance to live the life of a mendicant. Meditating upon the meaning of life under a peepul tree in Bodhgaya, he became the awakened one: the Buddha. That was in the middle of the first millennium BCE.
Buddhist texts such as the Nidanakatha, Buddhacarita and Mahavastu narrate moving accounts of the Buddha’s return to Kapilavastu and his meeting with wife Yasodhara and son Rahula. When young Rahula asked his father for his inheritance, the Buddha offered him his spiritual heritage in the form of a begging bowl. Rahula was ordained as a monk, privileging his spiritual inheritance over the transience of his royal heritage.
The episode finds resonance in the Buddhist art of Gandhara, Amaravati and Ajanta. At Ajanta, from the third quarter of the 5th century CE, we have a painted version in Cave 17, and another carved in stone in Cave 19 (photos).
Buddha in a mendicant’s attire stands tall before a diminutive Yasodhara and Rahula. His towering yet gracious presence, a metaphor of his spiritual attainment, is conveyed by his drooping shoulders and bent head. Yasodhara bears her loss with restraint as she watches Rahula receiving the bowl from the Buddha in the sculpture. She too joins the sangha later. In the painted version, the child tugs at his father’s robe.
Such intertwined legacies that traverse boundaries of tangible and intangible heritage abound in India in resplendent diversity. Heritage offers us ways of experiencing life patterns, brings us in communion with the thought-worlds of our ancestors, anchors us with a sense of community and belonging, and connects our pasts with the present.
But even as we rejoice in the glory of our inherited past, it is impossible to overlook the challenges facing heritage. The Himalayan ecological crisis looms large, with climate change, tectonic shifts and rising temperatures increasing the threat of floods, avalanches and earthquakes. These and other urgent concerns require redressal in ways that approach natural and cultural heritage as symbiotic systems. Given the sheer scale of India’s heritage, government organisations with limited resource allocation to safeguard heritage can scarcely ensure the necessary resilience and sustainability required for its protection in the face of numerous challenges. A more inclusive and people-centred approach guided by adequate institutional frameworks to protect heritage would serve us better.
Fortuitously, there is a palpable increase in heritage awareness in the public domain, asserting the need for greater accountability and transparency in its management. Recent issues of two of the country’s foremost news magazines discuss heritage as their lead stories. One highlights the urgent need to preserve the irreplaceable legacy of Ajanta. An earlier one was dedicated to hotly debated concerns surrounding museums and heritage repatriation.
Preserving heritage for, and with, local communities and maintaining the nature-culture equilibrium are huge challenges. As a historian of art and architecture, I am particularly eager to understand how a balance is to be struck between conservation and the danger of losing as-yet-unknown historical information that may be deeply embedded in a cultural heritage landscape. Community engagement as stakeholders in the preservation of local heritage also requires greater clarity and awareness of site histories, training, and meticulous documentation.
November 16, 2022 marked the 50th anniversary of Unesco‘s World Heritage Convention. As India competes to increase the number of nominated World Heritage Sites, substantial resources are being poured into the preparation of nomination dossiers. One can only hope for a commensurate increase in awareness, accountability and transparency in the preservation and management of our heritage landscapes. The stakes are too high.
The writer is professor of art history, Department of History, University of Delhi