Dṛṣṭi-bandhana: The Mirror of Admiration and the Making of Indian Rigidity

What if India's rigid social hierarchy wasn’t just the product of Brahmanism or colonial trauma—but also a result of praise?This paper introduces the Faxian Mirror Effect, a memetic phenomenon where a culture begins to crystallize aspects of itself after seeing them idealized by an outsider. I argue that admiration from Chinese Buddhist monks like Faxian and Xuanzang during the early centuries of the Common Era helped reinforce India’s social rigidity. Their glowing depictions of Indian order, monastic discipline, and spiritual hierarchy weren’t just historical flattery—they were mirrors. And once a culture sees itself reflected in such a flattering light, it often reshapes itself to match that image.