Buddhism, a philosophy and religion founded in ancient India, has a history of spreading far beyond its place of origin. While its expansion along the Silk Road to China and Greece is well-documented, the story of Buddhism in Africa is less known but equally intriguing. This article explores the historical presence of Buddhism in Africa, its current state, and the potential cultural and societal impacts it has had and may continue to have on the continent.
Инфографика распространения буддизма в мире
Early Encounters and Hypothetical Scenarios
Imagine Buddhist monks traveling along ocean trade routes, bringing the teachings of the Buddha to East Africa. Although the monks made numerous journeys to the continent and set up a small monastery, the teachings did not initially take hold with the locals. However, with the migration of the Bantu-speaking people from the Niger region, the Buddhist religion was quickly adopted and developed within Bantu society, blending with traditional beliefs to create an African-looking Buddha.
One theory suggests that to ensure Buddhism's survival and growth in Africa, an Indian Buddhist maritime power capable of competing against the Muslim Omanis would have been necessary. Similar to the spread of Islam, this could have resulted in the creation of an Indian/African creole culture on the coast, practicing Buddhism and gradually influencing the interior. This mirrors the historical development of the Swahili Culture, an Islamic mixture of Arabs and Black Africans.
Another possibility involves the Ming Dynasty, with its extended presence in East Africa, fostering a more significant Buddhist influence.
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Challenges and Realities
Despite these possibilities, several challenges could have hindered the widespread adoption of Buddhism in East Africa. The region's environmental conditions, such as sleeping sickness and malaria, could have limited the spread of Buddhist influence beyond the coast. Even if Buddhism had penetrated the hinterland, there was no guarantee that the local population would have been interested in it.
Buddhism is primarily monastic based, which might have been a hard sell in East Africa, where most people do not want to become monks. The region also lacks the worldliness that repulses some people, causing them to be interested in an ascetic lifestyle, as East Africa lacks the large cities found elsewhere. The harsh environment makes survival difficult, limiting the number of hermits or wandering solo monks, and hindering the establishment of large communal monasteries.
Historically, Buddhism lost the battle for the soul of India, eventually becoming a minority religion by the time of the Islamic Conquests. Any African Buddhism would likely develop independently, requiring a Buddhist kingdom on India's western shore to establish long-term trade with East Africa, exporting its culture, language, writing, and knowledge.
Modern Presence of Buddhism in Africa
Historically, Buddhism is said to have arrived on the continent with the visit of Zhenghe’s fleet to East Africa in the early 15th century, but its presence was as fleeting as the Chinese ambitions for maritime exploration, which were discontinued promptly. It has only really been in the modern period that Buddhism took any institutional form in Africa, and only in the late twentieth century did we begin to see any substantial Buddhist presence, largely due to the global Taiwanese Buddhist expansion of the 1990s and the more recent wave of mainland Chinese organizations.
Today, Buddhism is practiced throughout Africa. South Africa holds the largest Buddhist population in the continent. The African countries and territories in the Indian Ocean also have significant Buddhist minorities. Mauritius has the highest Buddhist percentage (between 1.5 to 2% of the total population) among African countries due to a high number of Chinese people (nearly 40 thousand or 3% of the Mauritian population). However, practicing Buddhists approximately comprise only about 0.4% of the population. Madagascar is also home of about 20 thousand Buddhists, about 0.1% of the total population. In North Africa, about 0.3% (roughly 20 thousand people) of Libya's population are also Buddhists, with most of them being foreign workers from Asia.
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The formal entrance of Han Chinese Buddhism into Africa occurred in 1992, when Nanhua Monastery was built just outside of Pretoria, South Africa. The monk in charge, Venerable Huili, then established the Amitofo Care Centre (ACC), which now raises thousands of children across six countries in Sub Saharan Africa.
One of the very few monastics of African descent is Ven. As the first Ugandan Buddhist monk, the most venerable Bhante Bhikkhu Buddharakkhita has ambitions to train 54 novices, one for every African nation.“I’m teaching Theravada Buddhism with African flavour to ensure people understand the Lord Buddha and don’t see it as something weird, foreign and Asian,” he says.“I see a lot of people suffering in Uganda and Africa. I find this role as a game changer, or a paradigm shift from suffering to happiness in Africa.“We have about 3,000 Buddhists in Africa. About 35 Ugandans. South Africa has the highest number because many people who came from Asian countries to work in the gold mines ended up establishing temples.”
Founder and abbot of the Uganda Buddhist Centre and temple, and author of Planting Dhamma Seeds: The Emergence of Buddhism in Africa, Buddharakkhita was born Steven Jemba Kabogozza, and raised a Catholic. “The cultural and political leaders in Africa haven’t embraced this religion and philosophy of Buddhism. I don’t know if there is really any president, cultural leader or king in Uganda, and Africa, who has fully embraced Buddhism… If there is anyone who could do so, Buddhism would grow very fast,” says the 53-year-old from his hillside centre overlooking Lake Victoria at Garuga, about 25 miles (40km) south of the capital, Kampala.
Buddhist Centers and Activities
The first and oldest Buddhist temple in Africa is the Sri Lankan Buddhist Temple in Dar es Salaam, founded in 1920 by a monk who had come with 500 Indian workers to work in Tanganyika. It is still in operation, running an orphanage and hosting regular Dharma events, and cooperates with the other Buddhist groups on the continent.
The Buddhist Retreat Centre opened the following year and since then has become the primary focus of Buddhist activities in Southern Africa. In addition to the courses run by Louis van Loon, the center has hosted a number of teachers from abroad.
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The focus of Buddhist activity in the Cape is the Dharma Centre at Somerset West, founded by and located in the luxurious home of Heila and Rodney Downey. As with most South Africans, the Downeys’ interest in Buddhism began with retreats at Ixopo. They were inspired to start a sitting group in their home by a visit from Joseph Goldstein in 1984. The following year the Dharma Centre was registered as an ecclesiastical organization.
Here is a list of countries with Buddhist centers:
- Morocco
- Botswana
- Cameroon
- Ghana
- Cote d'Ivoire
- Kenya
- Mali
- Burkina Faso
- Uganda
Impact on South Africa
Buddhism first came to South Africa in the early part of the century when a number of poor Tamil families (who had come from India as indentured laborers in the sugar-cane farms) converted to Buddhism. Their conversion was part of a South Indian Buddhist revival movement, inspired by a certain Pandit Iyodhi Dass, whose son Rajaram arrived in South Africa in 1914. The attraction of Buddhism lay in its denial of the caste system and its greater compatibility with a Western lifestyle. Although a number of families converted, the movement eventually fizzled out. Today only a handful of Indian Buddhists remain.
The dismantling of apartheid has destroyed one of the few moral certitudes right-thinking people had remaining. Releasing Nelson Mandela, lifting pass laws, desegregating buses, and preparing for free elections has not magically transformed the society. When the euphoria subsided, people looked around and saw that everything was much as it was before. The inequalities between white and black were not just the result of a singularly perverse piece of legislation. They are now stubbornly rooted in economic realities that cannot be cast off by a stroke of the president’s pen.
What role might Buddhism play in all of this? One might hope, for instance, that insight into the transparent, depedently emergent nature of things might dispel perceptions of people as endowed with inherent traits of character. violence, mindfulness, tolerance, understanding, and compassion will seep into society through the practice of the few thousand who have had contact with the dharma and been influenced by it.
Буддийский парк в Равангле, Индия.
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