Violence and Serenity: Late Buddhist Sculpture from Indonesia

dian subcontinent but also to wherever these religions spread, in Central Asia,
East Asia, and Southeast Asia.
The idea of syncretism is even more problematic in the context of Buddhism,
which arose as a heterodox belief system in a Hindu cultural context.
Inevitably, it both drew upon and rejected aspects of Brahmanism. Indra and
Brahmā are incorporated into depictions of the life of the Buddha, and other
Hindu gods were affiliated with the Mahāyāna pantheon. Likewise, the Buddha
was considered the tenth avatar of Vis ˙ n ˙ u.
Thus, if syncretism is to be defined as the combining of different religious
beliefs, it could be argued that this inevitably occurs in the development of
any religion over time. I will use the second definition of syncretism, the fusion
of beliefs. This definition suggests that the two religions merged to such
an extent that they lost their individuality and in essence formed a new type
of religion.
In the introduction to their translation of the Old Javanese poem the
Kuñjarakarn ˙ a Dharmakathana, A. Teeuw and S. O. Robson argue that, in
the fourteenth century, “Buddhism probably was no longer a separate religion
in Java, but had become amalgamated into the syncretistic Śiwa-Buddha religion
of Majapahit.”62 They are in a long line of scholars who argue that in the
late Singasari and Majapahit dynasties, Buddhism and Hinduism were fused
into a single religious system.
One of the first scholars to propose the idea of syncretism in the religions
of Indonesia was the Dutch scholar H. Kern in an essay of 1888.63 He referred
to the religion of the region as a mix of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs. Implicit
in his argument was the idea that even in India as Buddhism developed it
underwent a kind of degeneration due to Śaivite influence. As evidence of this
decline he cited the comments of seventh-century Orissan monks, who saw
Śaivite heresy in Mahāyāna Buddhism.64 In Kern’s opinion the religion of the
ancient Indonesians was just as hybrid.
The scholar Willem Stutterheim objected to the term “syncretism,” saying
that it was truer “in theory than reality.”65 Like Kern, he believed that Buddhism
in Java was drastically different from the religion in its early days in
India. Unlike Kern, he stressed the indigenous emphasis on magical rites and
the adaptation of Indian religions to Indonesian societies:
The designation “Buddhism” is very misleading for Java. It would be better
to call it: Tantrism with a Buddhist base. But Tantrism is as much Śivaite
as Buddhistic, and hence the differentiation has to be looked into very carefully.
They are very similar in character and were already so on Indian soil.
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