Scope for Academic Research on Bangladeshi Buddhists – Ven.

Upali Sramon
Many Bangladeshi Buddhist monks in abroad have had the sad experience of being
suspected either as converted from other religions or as fake monks. This is because the
world outside Bangladesh is absolutely unaware of the existence of Buddhists in
Bangladesh, except some handful of scholars. Such drawback in this highly advanced age
of information technology is regrettable. Therefore, now it is time that we make the
existence of Bangladeshi Buddhism a common knowledge in the world. In this essay I
propose such a scope for academic studies on Bangladeshi Buddhism.
One thing I must emphasize as long as we do not take the initiatives to interact with
outside world they will not come to us. Therefore we need to combine the strength of all
the Buddhist communities and institutions in Bangladesh to achieve this objective.
An all encompassing academic research on the Buddhists in Bangladesh needs to focus
on every significant detail of history, language, literature, arts, culture and so on of all the
Buddhist communities in the country. The historical details might be obtained from
available written records. At the same time we need to update the history providing an
adequate picture of everything in our contemporary society. There is a saying; history is
such that every generation must update it. If that is not done the flow of the ideas of a
society will be disrupted at some point. We have had enough experience of this
discrepancy of being lost in assumptions not having first hand evidences or facts of our
historical identity. Therefore a complete document is to be prepared consulting all the
previous works.
It is not possible to do this by one person. To materialize this idea students and concerned
personages need to cooperate and establish a strong project. In that the Bangladeshi
Buddhism can be categorized into different chapters taking into consideration all the
historical as well as the contemporary situations. Such practices as [incorporating
Buddhism in] the marriage ceremony, funeral rituals, even the Buddha’s altar in Buddhist
houses need to be individually treated. The intellectual dispositions of Bangladeshi
Buddhist scholars or great personalities also need to be exposed. If it is too huge to
appear in one volume, then a series could be produced in an annual, half-yearly, or even
quarterly basis in the form of a journal.
One may ask, what is importance of this? Whether known or unknown to the world,
whether they know the world or not what change does it make? In reply I would say that
there is immense importance of this. Most important thing is that in this increasingly
globalized world we can no more remain isolated. Bangladeshi Buddhist institutions
produced great intellectuals who flourished in countries like Tibet, Sri Lanka, India etc. in
the past. The intellectual bond among other countries and Bangladesh is very strong and
we need to realize that. Furthermore, Buddhist scholasticism in the world is advancing so
fast, but, very little or almost nothing is known in Bangladesh. Therefore, we can not, in
fact must not be naïve about these things.
The first obstacle in such a study may be the lack of financial support to bear the
expenses needed to collect textual and factual data, and the publication of the project.
But, an organization of responsible members and regular fund raising would largely fill
the gap. The most important thing is to feel the responsibility and get at the work
creatively. There is a proverb in Bengali language that daśer lāṭhi eker bojhā, meaning,
what appears merely a stick for ten persons is a huge burden for one. Remembering this
proverb and perceiving the need to work collectively and to interact with the world we
may be able to actualize the dream of making buddhism a common knowledge among the
international communities.