Only 4 Texts Remain from the Maya Civilization After Thousands Were Destroyed
Despite the fact that we are not very far removed from their heyday, we know very little about Maya civilization.
And it’s not because the Maya weren’t into recording their history.
The Maya were prolific writers and actually evolved from using scrolls to a form of folded paper called the codex right around the same time as the Romans, though each appears to be independent of the other.
[…]
Maya glyphs and the records of the Spanish conquistadors themselves attest to thousands of these codices existing by the time the two cultures met in the 16th century.
But, due to their being destroyed by priests, conquistadors, ship raiders, and even time and mold, only about 22 codices, of which only four have Maya origin, exist today.
None of them are complete, and none have their original covers.
[…]
And you might have noticed that the oldest one only goes back to 200-300 years before the Spanish conquest.
We know that the codices went back at least 800 years prior to that, so we’re essentially looking at the tip of a fingernail and trying to guess what the hand looked like.
And that’s how the soul of a culture gets erased from history…
See also: Burning the Maya Books: The 1562 Tragedy at Mani
The last codices destroyed were those of Nojpetén, Guatemala in 1697, the last city conquered in the Americas. (Wikipedia)
You can add Nalanda Mahavihara to that list.
The destruction of Nalanda is a contentious topic because it is sorta the epicentre of Buddhist anti-Islamic sentiment.
It’s held among scholars that the Muslim empires that displaced Buddhism from Pakistan and Afghanistan (Gandhara, one of the most important civilisations to Buddhism, straddled Pakistan and Afghanistan and there’s the famous Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan that were partially destroyed by the Taliban) as well as the destruction of Nalanda Mahavihara and northern India coming under Muslim rule that directly influenced Buddhist eschatology and specifically the Kalachakra Tantra. (Also the Tibetan empire spanned all the way to Kabul in Afghanistan briefly before they got pushed back by the Abbasid caliphate.)
The Kalachakra Tantra has a lot in it but there’s the prophesied end times, where “barbarians” (guess who) with their “false dharma” will lay waste to all of Buddhism (what’s the Buddhist analogue of the word Christendom?) and then the king of the fabled kingdom of Shambhala will ride out with a massive army to repel the barbarians and restore peace and justice and Buddhism to the world, ushering in a global Buddhist golden age.
(The Kalachakra Tantra puts lots of the big Abrahamic prophets on blast, referring to figures like Abraham, Jesus, Moses, Muhammad, and the Islamic eschatological figure Mahdi [who also serves a similar role to the king of Shambhala to Muslims in Islamic teachings] as being demonic, but it positions Islam squarely as the primary antagonist.)
The Kalachalra Tantra became a largely Tibetan Buddhist thing over time and it is of central importance to the Jonang school of Tibetan Buddhism, ironically it was a previous Dalai Lama and his Gelug school that suppressed the Jonang school and banned their writings and practices, and much of the Jonang school survived in Western China outside the reach of the Dalai Lama and (again ironically) the Jonang school was sheltered in post-revolutionary China. The larger ironic twist here is that the current Dalai Lama has himself brought the Kalachalra Tantra to forefront of Tibetan Buddhism, riding on a wave of sinophobic red terror sentiment and the post-9/11 islamophobic war or terror sentiment in the west.
I’m trying to avoid any particular heavy-handed bias here, besides calling the “Tibetan Buddhism is all peace, love, and understanding” trope to account because it’s important to understand that the Dalai Lama pitches a lot of stuff specifically to the west in order to curry favour. It’s also important to understand that, while the Dalai Lama claims to be a simple monk, his actions are very much rooted in political manoeuvres and there are things like him fostering interfaith dialogue at events where he is teaching Kalachakra Tantra, which is pretty ironic to do when you are spreading teachings that assert that Abrahamic religions are demonic. But this was also at time when those other religious leaders were in the region to commemorate the anniversary of the execution of the (sorta) last Sikh guru at the hands of the (Muslim) Mughal Emperor, so if you know your Buddhist theology and your North Indian history then it casts this interfaith dialogue in a very different, very political light.
It’s quite a can of worms.
My best advice would be to avoid falling into simplistic narratives of the noble underdog when it comes to talking about things like the destruction of ancient libraries - it definitely sucks that these libraries were destroyed and it represents a huge loss to humanity but at the same time if you extrapolate out too far you end up seeing history through the lens of the Muslim barbarians vs the sympathetic underdog Buddhists who barbarically suppressed the sympathetic underdog Jonang school who promulgated the Kalachakra Tantra which barbarically vilifies the sympathetic underdog Muslims who barbarically destroyed the Nalanda Mahavihara, which was a major centre of learning and culture for the sympathetic underdog Buddhists… you get the idea.
(On the other hand, what the Europeans did in the Americas was one of the absolute worst atrocities that the world has ever witnessed so maybe adopting a partisan angle isn’t always the worst thing to do.)
Ancient Buddhist history is really interesting. I can’t remember where it was but I recall once reading something about how in the westernmost reaches of Buddhist influence you had Hellenic stuff intermingling with Buddhism in a similar way that Buddhism has syncretised with different traditions and beliefs in Asia which is really fun to imagine
That’s the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom! (And the related civilisations.)
It’s super interesting because everyone has at least some idea of Alexander’s conquests but most historical documentaries or highschool history classes just focus on how wonderful and powerful the Greek empire was but they don’t look at the cultural interplay that occurred or how the influences flowed into Greek culture. This is because of the background radiation of cultural supremacism and shit, of course.
This is partly why I’m fascinated by religious studies: your run of the mill history studies tends to be more focused on conflicts between different civilizations or just on one particular civilization but religion is sort of like the fingerprint of a society’s values, the interplay between different cultures, and it traces directly along routes of trade and the flow of information (given that it was usually the religious figures who were literate and it often ancient libraries were maintained by clergy - in fact, this is such a mainstay of history that we have the word “clerical” to mean everything to do administration and documentation but this traces its etymological roots directly to the words clergy, since the clergy and their clerical undertakings were so synonymous).
This is gonna be a hot take but I’m especially interested in religious jurisprudence because ultimately it says a lot about what a society values, what it rejects, the conditions that it reponded to, and how it seeks to establish “the good life” for its followers. This is absolutely a parallel to the (mostly) secular radical projects that seek to achieve their own good life for the people.
In a sense, as radicals, we seek to abolish certain aspects of society that we see as being wholly or largely detrimental and we seek to establish the necessary elements to ensure a good life amongst the masses. This is exactly what the prophet Muhammad did by enforcing a strict code of ritual cleanliness (back when people were legitimately gross with regards to hygiene which risked the outbreak of plagues - he even went so far as to serious consider mandating that people had to brush their teeth daily, and I’m not even kidding lol) and it’s exactly what the tenth Sikh Guru did by establishing very visible articles of faith so that Sikhs are basically walking billboards for Sikhism with the expectation that if you are announcing to the world that you are a Sikh then you’d better be representing Sikh values like upholding justice even at the risk of one’s own life.
If you read what Guru Gobind Singh said about why Sikhs must display visible articles of faith, it’s not all that far removed from Marx staying “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution.”
Mao’s Three Rules and Eight Points are effectively laws and axioms that aren’t dissimilar from religious rules about what an army can and cannot do, to the point where the PLA choir still recites this in the same way that a mantra is recited.
I guess a superficial take here would be that I’m trying to cast radical politics as being religious or that communists are basically a cult something but really what I’m interested in is what can be learned about history, where I can use historical/cultural/religious principles and values to agitate and organise for revolution, and to learn what works and what doesn’t when it comes to enforcing a set of standards for society to achieve “the good life”.
The PLA distinguished itself from warlords because that was the era they emerged from and warlords were undeniably a plague on Chinese society that brought untold amounts of suffering and hardship down on the masses. There’s a lot to be learned from that and even today in China, the police serve the people in a way that is markedly different from the police in America which emerged from slave patrols who were reacting to slaves who attempted to abscond in order to be free.
CW: moderate discussions of animal abuse and slaughter ahead
Judaism made religious prohibitions against taking meat from animals without slaughtering them first. This is perhaps the oldest historical record of animals rights being established as it prohibited Jews from causing immense suffering to an animal by butchering it while it was still alive.
There’s a reason why this law is etched into Judaism and later Islam. The societies that existed before and around these religions either permitted this practice or it was frowned upon but society was still fairly permissive of the practice, and Abrahamic religions reacted to these circumstances.
In a similar vein, are we as radicals not seeking to respond to the lessons and the failures of previous revolutions?
If I were asked to make principles or axioms on this basis, I would literally say things like:
“Do not accept IMF loans except as an absolute necessity” (Yugoslavia)
“Do not allow for uneven economic prosperity that leaves ethnic groups or regions behind” (China, Yugoslavia)
“Enforce strict ideological discipline within the party” (USSR)
“Uphold the rights of people to express their sexual orientation and gender identity without persecution or harassment, do not favour one gender or sexuality over others” (Cuba)
“Maintain strict control over all armed forces” (Chile) etc. etc.
Is that really any different to the Three Rules and Eight Points that Mao established? Is that really so different from the Ten Commandments or Hammurabi’s Code?
The contents are different, sure, but ultimately I see far more parallels than I do points of difference.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I’m not sure I would agree that the destruction of Nalanda is the epicentre of the issue. More like one of the highlights.
I do agree about how the Tibetan syncretists politicized their lineage, though.