Environmental Ethics in Ancient India
History and development of 'Buddhist economics'
An interest in ‘well-being’ as an indicator of
economic status has continued to run through various strands of economic and
political thought particularly since the publication in 1973 of E.F.
Schumacher’s influential book ‘Small is Beautiful: economics as if people
mattered ’ which drew heavily on historical systems of ‘Buddhist economics’
in Southeast Asia.
This project examines
the history and development of a specifically ‘Buddhist economics’ in the
centuries between the original teachings of the historical Buddha in north
India, and its subsequent spread to other parts of South, South-east and East
Its primary focus is on environmental ethics, and in particular the role that Buddhism and other religious institutions played in the management of land and natural resources and their strategies for dealing with the economic and human fallout of environmental stress.
The study draws initially on the results of Sanchi
Survey project which sought to relate Buddhist monastic sites in central India to
archaeological patterns in their surrounding landscape. Landscape data including ritual sites,
settlements, water-resource structures and land-use evidence present a spatial
model for understanding Buddhism’s role within the wider social and economic
Despite their distinct placing within the landscape, Buddhist
monasteries were part of an interdependent economy with close parallels to
systems of monastic landlordism known in Sri
Lanka and Southeast Asia. Lay support of Buddhist monks was
essential to the latter’s survival, but practical services provided by the
monastery, in particular water for domestic and agricultural use, formed the
backbone to changing social and economic conditions during the early centuries
BC including urbanisation and agricultural ‘involution’. The monasteries’ close relationship
with agricultural improvement and water management was an important instrument
of lay patronage, but it was also closely related to the Buddhism’s deeper preoccupation
with human suffering (dukkha) and the means of its alleviation: one of
the key messages that arose from the Buddha’s Enlightenment was that we suffer
if we do not live correctly.
This project focuses on one particularly practical way of tackling such erroneous living and consequent suffering, viz, the sangha’s involvement with water and land management, a role which was in later years usurped by competing religious frameworks.
- Shaw, J., (In preparation, 2013) ‘Archaeologies of well-being and suffering: environmental ethics and Buddhist economics in ancient India’
- Shaw, J. (in preparation, 2013) (Ed.) Archaeology of Religious Change. World Archaeology, vol. 45.1 (Routledge).
- Shaw, J., (in preparation, 2013) ‘Introduction’. Archaeology of Religious Change. World Archaeology, vol. 45.1
- Shaw, J., (in preparation, 2013) ‘Archaeologies of Religious Change in South Asia’. Archaeology of Religious Change. World Archaeology, vol. 45.1
- Shaw, J., J. Sutcliffe, and E. Brown. (In preparation, 2012). ‘Irrigation and complex society in ancient India: an archaeo-hydrological assessment’. Water History (journal).
- Shaw, J. (2007). Buddhist Landscapes in Central India: Sanchi hill and archaeologies of religious and social change, c. 3rd century BC to 5th century AD. London: British Association for South Asian Studies, The British Academy.
- Shaw, J. (2011). 'Monasteries, monasticism, and patronage in ancient India: Mawasa, a recently documented hilltop Buddhist complex in the Sanchi area of Madhya Pradesh', South Asian Studies 27 (2): 111-130.
- Shaw, J. and J.V. Sutcliffe (2005), ‘Ancient Dams and Buddhist Landscapes in the Sanchi area: New evidence on Irrigation, Land use and Monasticism in Central India’, South Asian Studies 21, 1-24.