@Dawnfirstlight…..
//”Can someone write
something about Buddhism in India? Reason being I was challenged by
followers from other religion why Buddhism is not popular in India.
They even questioned why Chinese believe in Buddhism whereas
majority of the Indians don't believe in Buddhism. I told them it
is because Buddha said everyone is equal but India has caste
system, thus it is not easily accepted by the people there. I think
that's the main reason.”//
The below article should answer
your questions?
Buddhism’s Disappearance from
India
Vinay
Lal
One of the supreme ironies of the
history of Buddhism in India is the question of how Buddhism came
to disappear from the land of its birth. Many
scholars of Buddhism, Hinduism, Indian history, and of religion
more generally have been devoted to unraveling this
puzzle. There is no absolute consensus on this
matter, and a few scholars have even contended that Buddhism never
disappeared as such from India. On this view,
Buddhism simply changed form, or was absorbed into Hindu
practices. Such an argument is, in fact, a
variation of the view, which perhaps has more adherents than any
other, that Buddhism disappeared, not on account of persecution by
Hindus, but because of the ascendancy of reformed
Hinduism. However, the view that Buddhists were
persecuted by Brahmins, who were keen to assert their caste
supremacy, still has some adherents, and in recent years has been
championed not only by some Dalit writers and their sympathizers
but by at least a handful of scholars of pre-modern Indian history.
[1]
What is not disputed is the gradual
decline of Buddhism in India, as the testimony of the Chinese
traveler, Hsuan Tsang, amply demonstrates.
Though Buddhism had been the dominant religion in much of the
Gangetic plains in the early part of the Christian era, Hsuan
Tsang, traveling in India in the early years of the 7th
century, witnessed something quite different. In
Prayag, or Allahabad as it is known to many, Hsuan Tsang
encountered mainly heretics, or non-Buddhists, but that is not
surprising given the importance of Prayag as a pilgrimage site for
Brahmins. But, even in Sravasti, the capital
city of the Lichhavis, a north Indian clan that came to power
around 200 AD, established their capital in Pasupathinath, and in a
long and glorious period of reign extending through the early part
of the ninth century endowed a large number of both Hindu and
Buddhist monuments and monasteries, Hsuan Tsang witnessed a much
greater number of “Hindus” (ie, non-Buddhists, such as Jains and
Saivites) than Buddhists. Kusinagar, the small
village some 52 kilometres from Gorakhpur where the Buddha had gone
into mahaparinirvana, was in a rather dilapidated state and Hsuan
Tsang found few Buddhists. In Varanasi, to be
sure, Hsuan Tsang found some 3000 Bhikkus or Buddhist monks, but
they were outshadowed by more than 10,000
non-Buddhists. There is scarcely any
question that Hsuan Tsang arrived in India at a time when Buddhism
was entering into a state of precipitous decline, and by the
13th century Buddhism, as a formal religion, had
altogether disappeared from India. [2] But even as Buddhism went
into decline, it is remarkable that the great seat of Buddhist
learning, Nalanda, continued to flourish, retaining its importance
until the Muslim invasions of the second
millennium. Moreover, it is from Nalanda that
Padmasambhava carried Buddhism to Tibet in the eighth
century. Consequently, even the story of
Buddhism in India cannot be unequivocally written in a single
register of decline.
To consider the question somewhat
more systematically, we might wish to consider in serial order the
various reasons advanced for Buddhism’s decline and disappearance
from India. The various arguments can be grouped
under the following headings:
sectarian and internal histories,
focusing on schisms within the Buddhist faith, the widening
differences between the clergy, Bhikkus, and laity, and the growing
corruption within the sangha; histories
focused on Buddhism’s relations with Brahmanism,
dwelling on the alleged persecution of Buddhists by Brahmins, the
defeat of the Buddhists by the great theologian Shankara in public
debates, as well as on the supposedly characteristic tendency of
Hinduism, or rather Brahmanism, to absorb its opponents; and,
finally, secular and political histories,
which emphasize the withdrawal of royal patronage from Buddhism
and, later, the Muslim invasions which had the effect of driving
into extinction an already debilitated faith.
Turning our attention to what I
have described as sectarian histories, it is generally conceded
that the Buddhist clergy paid insufficient attention to its
laity. Buddhist mendicants kept their distance
from non-mendicants, and as scholars of Buddhism have noted, no
manual for the conduct of the laity was produced until the
11th century. Non-mendicants may not
have felt particularly invested in their religion, and as the
venues where the mendicants and non-mendicants intersected
gradually disappeared, the laity might have felt distanced from the
faith. The contrast, in this respect, with
Jainism is marked. Some scholars have also
emphasized the narrative of decay and corruption within a faith
where the monks had come to embrace a rather easy-going and even
indolent lifestyle, quite mindless of the Buddha’s insistence on
aparigraha, or non-possession. The
Buddhist monasteries are sometimes described as repositories of
great wealth.
The secular and political histories
adopt rather different arguments. It has been argued that royal
patronage shifted from Buddhist to Hindu religious
institutions. Under the Kushanas, indeed
even under the Guptas (325-497 AD), both Buddhists and adherents of
Brahmanism received royal patronage, but as Brahmanism veered off,
so to speak, into Vaishnavism and Saivism, and regional kingdoms
developed into the major sites of power, Buddhism began to suffer a
decline. The itinerant Buddhist monk, if one may
put it this way, gave way to forms of life less more conducive to
settled agriculture. The Palas of Bengal, though
they had been hospitable to Vaishnavism and Saivism, were
nonetheless major supporters of Buddhism.
However, when Bengal came under the rule of the Senas (1097-1223),
Saivism was promulgated and Buddhism was pushed out -- towards
Tibet.
Though Buddhism had already entered
into something of a decline by the time of Hsuan Tsang’s visit to
India during the reign of Harsha of Kanauj in the early seventh
century, it has also been argued that its further demise,
particularly in the early part of the second millennium AD, was
hastened by the arrival of Islam. On this view,
Buddhism found competition in Islam for converts among low-caste
Hindus. Even Ambedkar, whose animosity towards
Hinduism is palpable, was nonetheless firmly of the view that Islam
dealt Buddhism a death blow. As he was to put
it, “brahmanism beaten and battered by the Muslim invaders could
look to the rulers for support and sustenance and get
it. Buddhism beaten and battered by the Muslim
invaders had no such hope. It was uncared for
orphan and it withered in the cold blast of the native rulers and
was consumed in the fire lit up by the
conquerors.” Ambedkar was quite certain that
this was “the greatest disaster that befell the religion of Buddha
in India.” We thus find Ambekdar embracing the
“sword of Islam thesis”: “The sword of Islam
fell heavily upon the priestly class. It
perished or it fled outside India. Nobody
remained alive to keep the flame of Buddhism
burning.” [3] There
are, of course, many problems with this view.
The “sword of Islam” thesis remains controversial, at best, and
many reputable historians are inclined to dismiss it
outright. Islam was, moreover, a late entrant
into India, and Buddhism was showing unmistakable signs of its
decline long before Islam became established in the Gangetic
plains, central India, and the northern end of present-day Andhra
and Karnataka.
Many narrative accounts of
Buddhism’s decline and eventual disappearance from the land of its
faith have been focused on Buddhism’s relations with Hinduism or
Brahmanism. Nearly 20 years ago the historian S.
R. Goyal wrote that "according
to
many
scholars hostility of the Brahmanas was one of the major causes of
the decline of Buddhism in India." The Saivite
king, Shashanka, invariably appears in such histories as a
ferocious oppressor of the Buddhists, though the single original
source for all subsequent narratives about Shashanka’s ruinous
conduct towards Buddhists remains Hsuan Tsang.
Shashanka is reported to have destroyed the Bodhi tree and ordered
the destruction of Buddhist images. Hindu
nationalists appear to think that many Muslim monuments were once
Hindu temples, but partisans of Buddhism are inclined to the view
that Hindu temples were often built on the site of Buddhist
shrines.
If some
scholars focus on outright persecution, others speak of a long
process during which Buddhist practices became absorbed into
Hinduism. The doctrine of ahimsa may have
originated with the Buddha, and certainly found its greatest
exposition in the Buddha’s teachings, but by the second half of the
1st millennium AD it had become part of Hindu
teachings. The great Brahmin philosopher,
Shankaracharya (c. 788-820 AD), is said to have engaged the
Buddhists in public debates and each time he emerged
triumphant. Monastic practices had once been
unknown in Brahminism, but over time this
changed. Shankaracharya himself established
maths or monasteries at Badrinath in the north, Dwarka in the west,
Sringeri in the south, and Puri in the
east. The Buddha had, as is commonly
noticed, been transformed into an avatara (descent) of
Vishnu. The tendency of Hinduism to absorb rival
faiths has been commented upon by many, though one could speak
equally of the elements from other faiths that have gone into the
making of Hinduism. Was Buddha absorbed into the
Hindu pantheon so that Buddhism might become defanged, or is it the
case that Buddhism stood for certain values that Hinduism was eager
to embrace as its own?
Though many Dalit and other
anti-Brahminical writers would like to represent Brahminism as a
tyrannical faith that wrought massive destruction upon the
Buddhists [see www.dalistan.org],
the matter is more complicated. A recent study
of the Bengal Puranas indubitably shows that the Buddhists were
mocked, cast as mischievous and malicious in Brahminical
narratives, and subjected to immense rhetorical
violence. But rhetorical violence is not
necessarily to be read as physical violence perpetrated upon the
Buddhists, any more than accounts of thousands of Hindu temples
destroyed at the hands of Muslim invaders are to be read
literally. Similarly, the absorption of the
Buddha into Vishnu’s pantheon may have represented something of a
compromise between the Brahmins and Buddhists:
since so much of what Buddhism stood for had been incorporated into
certain strands of Brahminism, the Buddha was at least to be given
his just dues. This anxiety of absorption
continues down to the present day, and one of the more curious
expressions of this anxiety must surely be a letter from the All
India Bhikkhu Sangha to the-then Prime Minister of India, P. V.
Narasimha Rao. In his letter of 23 February
1995, the President of the Sangha complained that the actor Arun
Govil, who had played Rama in the TV serial Ramayana, had
been chosen to play the Buddha in the TV serial by the same
name. Could anyone really play the
Buddha? “As you know,” the letter reminds Rao,
“the Buddha was never a mythological figure as Rama & Hanuman
but very much a historical figure.” [5] If
nothing else, we might at least read the disappearance of Buddhism
from India as a parable about how myth always outlives
history.
Thanks for sharing. From the article above, can tell that there
are many factors that contributed to Buddhism's disappearance
from India. Hope that people will read it and stop using Buddhism's
disappearance from India to make Buddhists lose their faith in
Buddhism.
