Indian Roots of Tibetan Buddhism, a 2014 documentary by Indian film-maker and conservator Benoy K. Behl, won the Best Documentary Producer Award at the Madrid International Film Festival earlier this month, competing with around 100 other films from 50 countries.
Benoy K. Behl. From Dharma-documentaries.net
Produced by India’s External Publicity Division of the External Affairs Ministry and narrated by Behl, the documentary was shot extensively in Tibet, Kalmykia in European Russia, and Ladakh, Spiti, Arunachal Pradesh, Nalanda, Bodh Gaya, Sarnath, and Karnataka in India. It traces the foundation of Tibetan Buddhism to its roots in ancient India’s Nalanda University, through hundreds of years of shared spiritual history between India and Tibet.
The film includes observations and comments from a number of Tibetan monastics and scholars, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche (or Samdhong Lobsang Tenzin), the first elected prime minister of the Tibetan government in exile.
“These institutions, Takshashila, Nalanda, and later Vikramshila, these were not like monasteries, but these really became academic centers,” says the Dalai Lama.
Behl notes that because there was no written script in Tibet until the 7th century, a sophisticated language and script based on Sanskrit was developed, capable of preserving the subtle philosophic concepts and profound commentaries of Buddhism and to enable the translation and transfer of knowledge.
“Tibetan script is very much a copy and very much similar to Sanskrit because it is based on one of the ancient Indian scripts,” notes the Dalai Lama. (Indian Television)
His Holiness the Dalai Lama is one of several Buddhist scholars apearing in the documentary. From Fashion Lingua
The film covers the evolution of Buddhism in India through political and cultural changes, and how the efforts of hundreds of Indian scholars including Atisha and Shantarakshita helped the Nalanda tradition gain a foothold in Tibet and many other Himalayan countries.
Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche observes: “Religion is a word which is a very loose expression. I don’t know whether Buddhism should be put in the connotation of religion or not. If we are very strictly speaking, ‘religion’ has its own connotation. Buddhism is different from all other religious traditions in that there's no place for unanalyzed faith or something which is to be accepted without one's own understanding or one's own logical conclusions.”
Behl, a well-established art historian and film-maker, began his career as a photographer. He has since has made 130 documentary films, although Indian Roots of Tibetan Buddhism is the first to enter an international film festival. The film also won the Best Documentary Award at the Bioscope Global Film Festival in New Delhii and Best Script Writer at the Noida International Film Festival.
Another film by Behl, Yoga: An Ancient Vision of Life, was screened in 50 countries on 21 June to mark World Yoga Day. India’s embassies and high commissions have also held exhibitions of Behl’s photography on yoga in 20 countries.