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Buddhist Decline

After some centuries Buddhism declined as speedily as it once grew, in part owing to the shrewd device of the influential and unyielding Brahmans, who foresaw the only way for their self-preservation. That was to make a compromise of Brahmanism with Buddhism, and from this fusion there has been evolved that amorphous amalgam of heterogeneous beliefs known as Hinduism.

Buddhism never ousted Brahmanism from any large part of India. The two systems co-existed as popular religions during more than a thousand years (250 BC to about AD 800)1 and modern Hinduism is the joint product of both. Certain kings and certain eras were intensely Buddhistic; but the continuous existence of Brahmanism is abundantly proved from the time of Alexander (327 BC) downwards. The historians who chronicled his march, and the Greek ambassador Megasthenes, who succeeded them (300 BC) in their literary labors, bear witness to the predominance of the old faith in the period immediately preceding Asoka.

Inscriptions, local legends, Sanskrit literature, and the drama disclose the survival of Brahman influence during the next six centuries (250 BC-AD 400). From AD 400 there is the evidence of the Chinese pilgrims, who toiled through Central Asia into India as the birthplace of their faith. Fa-Hien entered India from Afghanistan, and journeyed down the whole Gangetic valley to the Bay of Bengal in AD 390-413. He found Brahman priests equally honored with Buddhist monks, and temples to the Indian gods side by side with the religious houses of his own faith.

Hsuan Tsang also travelled to India from China by the Central Asia route, and has left a fuller record of the state of the two religions in the 7th century. His journey extended from AD 629 to 645, and everywhere throughout India he found the two faiths eagerly competing for the suffrages of the people. By that time, indeed, Brahmanism was beginning to assert itself at the expense of the other religion. The monuments of the great Buddhist monarchs, Asoka and Kanishka, confronted him from the time he neared the Punjab frontier; but so also did the temples of Siva and his "dread" queen Bhima. Throughout north-western India he found Buddhist convents and monks surrounded by "swarms of heretics."

The political power was also divided, although Buddhist sovereigns predominated. A Buddhist monarch ruled over ten kingdoms in Afghanistan. At Peshawar the great monastery built by Kanishka was deserted, but the populace remained faithful. In Kashmir king and people were devout Buddhists, under the teaching of five hundred monasteries and five thousand monks. In the country identified with Jaipur, on the other hand, the inhabitants were devoted to heresy and war.

During the next few centuries Brahmanism gradually became the ruling religion. There are legends of persecutions instigated by Brahman reformers, such as Kumarila Bhatta and Sankar-Acharjya. But the downfall of Buddhism seems to have resulted from natural decay, and from bism, new movements of religious thought, rather than from any general suppression by the sword. Its extinction is contemporaneous with the rise of Hinduism. In the 11th century, only outlying states, such as Kashmir and Orissa, remained faithful; and before the Mahommedans fairly came upon the scene Buddhism as a popular faith had disappeared from India.

The revival of Brahmanism and the rise of Bhagavatism led to the fall of popularity of Buddhism. The use of Pali, the language of the masses, as the language of Buddhism was given up from the 1st century AD. The Buddhists began to adopt Sanskrit, the language of the elite. After the birth of Mahayana Buddhism in the first century AD, the practice of idol worship and making offerings led to the deterioration of moral standards.

The similarity between Buddhism and Hinduism and the influence of Buddhism on Hinduism contributed significantly to the decline of Buddhism in India. Originally there were certain similarities in the fundamental doctrines of Hinduism and Buddhism. The idea of transmigration of soul or incarnation was common to both the religious. Both religions are against taking animal life. It was no doubt permitted to Hindus by epics and in fact prevailed in Vedic times, but was given up under the influence of Buddhism. Buddhism also brought phenomenal change on the mode of worship and rituals of Hinduism. Vedic sacrifices were mostly superseded by other form of worship associated with temples and veneration of images.

Buddha only suggested sermons and meditation to his followers. However, the ordinary follower of Buddha in the due course of time accepted the worship of relics of Buddha and his chief disciples. The Buddhist tradition of worshipping of great teachers helped the process of deification of Rama and Krishna. Even in Hinduism, Lord Buddha has been regarded as the 10th incarnation of Vishnu. Significantly the Mathas of Hinduism owed their origin to Buddhism. For the first time in the history of Hinduism, Mathas were established by Sankara, the South Indian revivalist, in the 9th century AD, modelled on the pattern of Buddhisti monasteries. The mathas at Saingiri, Puri, Dwaraka and Badrinath which were established by Sankara, helped in the revival of Hinduism by enforcing the disciplinary concepts of Buddhism. These mathas still attract thousands of Hindu pilgrims.

Buddhism received a set back in the land of its birth. Many of the noble ideas of Hinduism were incorporated in the broad fold of Hinduism including Buddha himself as the reincarnation of Vishnu. Hinduism struggled with Buddhism from the 4th to 9th century. The greatest danger of Buddhism came from its emphasis on tolerance and obliteration of differences. The very fact that Buddhism and Hinduism came nearer to each other led to the disintegration of the former. The decadence of Buddhism in India was hastened by its alliance with forms of magic and erotic mysticism called Saktism. Hindus had, in the meanwhile, absorbed the good points which Buddhism had to offer.

During the last ten centuries Buddhism has been a banished religion from its native home. But it has won greater triumphs in its exile than it could ever have achieved in the land of its birth. Afghanistan, Nepal, Eastern Turkestan, Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria, China, Japan, the Eastern Archipelago, Siam, Burma, Ceylon and India at one time marked the magnificent circumference of its conquests. Its shrines and monasteries stretched in a continuous line from the Caspian to the Pacific, and still extend from the confines of the Russian empire to the equatorial archipelago.

During twenty-five centuries Buddhism has encountered and outlived a series of powerful rivals. In India its influence has survived its separate existence: it supplied a basis upon which Brahmanism finally developed from the creed of a caste into the religion of the people. The noblest survivals of Buddhism in India are to be found, not among any peculiar body, but in the religion of the people; in that principle of the brotherhood of man, with the reassertion of which each new revival of Hinduism starts; in the asylum which the great Hindu sects afford to women who have fallen victims to caste rules, to the widow and the out-caste.