Dear Vir, This is why Buddhism declined in India…

In the first part of this post, I cited evidence contrary to Sh Sanghvi’s assertion that “Hindu kings destroyed Buddhist monasteries…”

Sh Sanghvi’s second point was that, as a consequence of such destruction (which we now know is not supported by historical records) Buddhism declined in India – that land of its birth.

Let us start by what Dr B R Ambedkar had to say on the decline of Buddhism in India:

“..There can be no doubt that the fall of Buddhism in India was due to the invasions of the Musalmans…Islam came out as the enemy of the ‘But’. The word ‘But,’ as everybody knows, is an Arabic word and means an idol. Not many people, however, know that the derivation of the word ‘But’ is the Arabic corruption of Buddha. Thus the origin of the word indicates that in the Moslem mind idol worship had come to be identified with the Religion of the Buddha. To the Muslims, they were one and the same thing. The mission to break the idols thus became the mission to destroy Buddhism. Islam destroyed Buddhism not only in India but wherever it went. Before Islam came into being Buddhism was the religion of Bactria, Parthia, Afghanistan, Gandhar and Chinese Turkestan, as it was of the whole of Asia….”

What other reasons caused the downfall of Buddhism in India?

.

Here is Arun Shourie in To Undo the Scandal, Undo the Control:

“..Swamiji (Swami Vivekananda) focussed on another factor about which we hear little today: internal decay. The Buddha — like Gandhiji in our times — taught us first and last to alter our conduct, to realise through practice the insights he had attained. But that is the last thing the people want to do, they want soporifics: a mantra, a pilgrimage, an idol which may deliver them from the consequences of what they have done. The people walked out on the Buddha’s austere teaching for it sternly ruled out props. No external suppression etc., were needed to wean them away..

The religion became monk and monastery-centric. And these decayed as closed groups and institutions invariably do. Ambedkar himself alludes to this factor — though he puts even this aspect of the decay to the ravages of Islam. After the decimation of monks by Muslim invaders, all sorts of persons — married clergy, artisan priests — had to be roped in to take their place. Hence the inevitable result, Ambedkar writes: “It is obvious that this new Buddhist priesthood had neither dignity nor learning and were a poor match for the rival, the Brahmins whose cunning was not unequal to their learning.”

In the words of Swami Vivekananda:

“..and what remained of it (the original message) became full of superstitions and ceremonials, a hundred times cruder than those it intended to suppress”

and later

“…By becoming too philosophic…they (the monks) lost much of their breadth of heart.”

In the words of Sri Aurobindo,

“…(Buddhism’s) trenchant affirmations and still more exclusive negations could not be made sufficiently compatible with the native flexibility, many-sided susceptibility and rich synthetic turn of the Indian religious consciousness; it was a high creed but not plastic enough to hold the heart of the people…”

As Arun Shourie concludes (emphasis added):

We find in such factors a complete explanation for the evaporation of Buddhism. But we will find few of them in the secularist discourse today. Because their purpose is served by one “thesis” alone: Hindus crushed Buddhists, Hindus demolished their temples… In regard to matter after critical matter — the Aryan-Dravidian divide, the nature of Islamic invasions, the nature of Islamic rule, the character of the Freedom Struggle — we find this trait — suppresso veri, suggesto falsi. This is the real scandal of history-writing in the last thirty years. And it has been possible for these “eminent historians” to perpetrate it because they acquired control of institutions like the ICHR. To undo the falsehood, you have to undo the control.

Writing in “The Historical Interaction between the Buddhist and Islamic Cultures before the Mongol Empire”, Alexander Berzin notes that :

…this loss (of Buddhism in India) was a complex phenomenon, let us examine a few of the factors that might explain it.

The Hindus and Jains had no universities or large monasteries. Their monks lived alone or in small groups in remote regions, studying and meditating privately, with no community rituals or ceremonies. Since they posed no threat, it was not worth the invaders’ time or efforts to destroy them. They damaged only the Hindu and Jain temples found in the major cities for laypeople. The Buddhists, on the other hand, had large, imposing monastic universities, surrounded by high walls and fortified by the local kings. Their razing clearly had military significance.

…For laypeople in India, Buddhism was primarily a religion of devotion focused around the large monasteries. Although there was a forest tradition for intense meditation, those who wished to study deeply became celibate monks or nuns. Householders offered food and material support for the monastics. They came twice a month to the monasteries for a day of keeping vows of ethical discipline and listening to sermons based on the scriptures. They did not regard themselves, however, as a separate group from the Hindu majority. For ceremonies marking rites of passage in their lives, such as birth, marriage, and death, they relied on Hindu rituals.

When Hinduism identified Buddha as a manifestation of its supreme god Vishnu, the Buddhists did not object. In fact, throughout northern India, Kashmir, and Nepal, Buddhism was already mixed with many elements of devotional Hinduism. Therefore, when the major monasteries were destroyed, most Buddhists were easily absorbed into Hinduism. They could still focus their devotion on Buddha and be considered good Hindus. Hinduism and Jainism, on the other hand, were more oriented to laypeople’s practice in the home and did not require monastic institutions.

Furthermore, Hindus and Jains were useful to the Muslim conquerors. The Hindus had a warrior caste that could be conscripted into service, while the Jains were the major local merchants and sources of tax. The Buddhists, on the other hand, did not have a distinguishing occupation or service as a people as a whole. They no longer played a role in interregional trade as they had centuries earlier when Buddhist monasteries dotted the Silk Route. Therefore, whatever efforts there were for conversion to Islam were directed primarily toward them.

…Thus, although most of northern India remained Hindu, with pockets of Jains, Punjab and East Bengal gradually had the most converts. The Buddhists in the former had the longest contact with Islam, particularly enhanced with the flood of Islamic masters from Iran and the Middle East that sought refuge there from the Mongol attacks that began in the early thirteenth century. East Bengal, on the other hand, has always been a land with many impoverished peasants who would be ripe for the appeal of equality with Islam.

Read together, all these accounts point to only one conclusion – The decline of  Buddhism was a result of a complex interplay between several factors but no one – not one historian – has put the blame for its demise on destruction of monasteries by Hindu kings.

Sh Sanghvi owes his readers – particularly the young, impressionable minds – an apology. He is a media pundit – whose words are read and trusted by many. I wish he would have been more careful before penning his thoughts.

To end, a fitting quote by Bhagwaan Gautam Buddha:

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written…But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

May Tathagata show you the way.

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