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Published on Tuesday, 09 June 2009 19:00 | | 
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The Buddha was a businessman. But don't take anyone's word for it - it's written in stone.
Of all the iconic scenes found in the earliest Buddhist art from India, none are more striking than the sculpted representation of a title deed involving one of Buddhism's most venerable monasteries: The transaction, involving 10 million gold coins, clearly shows that, far from being an ascetic, other-worldly religious tradition, Buddhism was, in fact, 'deeply entangled with money – and a very great deal of it at that,' according to Gregory Schopen, chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures and an authority on ancient Indian Buddhism.