Disappearance of Buddhism From India: An Untold Story
Naresh Kumar
The complete disappearance of the religion of the
Buddha from the land of its birth is one of the
greatest puzzles of history. Once holding sway
throughout the length and breadth of the subcontinent,
Buddhism today survives only in the Himalayan fringes
along the Tibetan frontier and in small pockets in
northern and western India among recent Ambedkarite
Dalit converts.
Various theories have been put forward which seek to
explain the tragic eclipse of Buddhism from India.
According to one view, corruption in the Buddhist
sangha or priesthood precipitated Buddhism's ultimate
decline. While it is true that with time the Buddhist
priests became increasingly lax in the observance of
religious rules, corruption alone cannot explain the
death of Buddhism. After all, Buddhism was replaced by
an even more corrupt Brahminism. Another theory is
that Buddhism disappeared from India in the wake of
the Arab and Turkish invasions in which many Buddhists
were said to have been killed. However, this theory,
too, seems not to be convincing as a complete
explanation of the extinction of Buddhism in India .
After all, in places such as Bengal and Sind, which
were ruled by Brahminical dynasties but had Buddhist
majorities, Buddhists are said to have welcomed the
Muslims as saviours who had freed them from the
tyranny of 'upper' caste rule. This explains why most
of the 'lower-caste' people in Eastern Bengal and Sind
embraced Islam. Few, if any, among the 'upper' castes
of these regions did the same.
Since Buddhism was replaced by triumphant Brahminism,
the eclipse of Buddhism in India was obviously
primarily a result of the Brahminical revival. The
Buddha was a true revolutionaryâ€"and his crusade
against Brahminical supremacy won him his most ardent
followers from among the oppressed castes. The Buddha
challenged the divinity of the Vedas, the bedrock of
Brahminism. He held that all men are equal and that
the caste system or varnashramadharma, to which the
Vedas and Other Brah'minical' books had given
religious sanction, was completely false. Thus, in
the Anguttara Nikaya, the Buddha is said to have
exhorted the Bhikkus, saying, “Just, O brethren, as
the great rivers, when they have emptied themselves
into the Great Ocean, lose their different names and
are known as the Great Ocean Just so, O brethren, do
the four varnasâ€"Kshatriya, Brahmin, Vaishya and
Sudraâ€"when they begin to follow the doctrine and
discipline propounded by the Tathagata [i.e. the
Buddha], renounce the different names of caste and
rank and become the members of one and the same
society.â€
The Buddha’s fight against Brahminism won him many
enemies from among the Brahmins. They were not as
greatly opposed to his philosophical teachings as they
were to his message of universal brotherhood and
equality for it directly challenged their hegemony and
the scriptures that they had invented to legitimize
this. To combat Buddhism and revive the tottering
Brahminical hegemony, Brahminical revivalists resorted
to a three-pronged strategy. Firstly, they launched a
campaign of hatred and persecution against the
Buddhists. Then, they appropriated many of the finer
aspects of Buddhism into their own system so as to win
over the "lower" caste Buddhist masses, but made sure
that this selective appropriation did not in any way
undermine Brahminical hegemony. The final stage in
this project to wipeout Buddhism was to propound and
propagate the myth that the Buddha was merely another
‘incarnation’ (avatar) of the Hindu god Vishnu.
Buddha was turned into just another of the countless
deities of the Brahminical pantheon.
The Buddhists were finally absorbed into the caste
system, mainly as Shudras and ‘Untouchables’, and
with that the Buddhist presence was completely
obliterated from the land of its birth. Dr. Bhimrao
Ambedkar writes in his book, The Untouchables, that
the ancestors of today's Dalits were Buddhists who
were reduced to the lowly status of ‘untouchables’
for not having accepted the supremacy of the Brahmins.
They were kept apart from other people and were
forced to live in ghettos of their own. Being treated
worse that beasts of burden and forbidden to receive
any education, these people gradually lost touch with
Buddhism, but yet never fully reconciled themselves to
the Brahminical order. Many of them later converted to
Islam, Sikhism and Christianity in a quest for
liberation from the Brahminical religion.
To lend legitimacy to their campaign against Buddhism,
Brahminical texts included fierce strictures against
Buddhists. Manu, in his Manusmriti, laid down that,
“If a person touches a Buddhist […] he shall
purify himself by having a bath.†Aparaka ordained
the same in his Smriti. Vradha Harit declared entry
into a Buddhist temple a sin, which could only be
expiated for by taking a ritual bath. Even dramas and
other books for lay people written by Brahmins
contained venomous propaganda against the Buddhists.
In the classic work, Mricchakatika, (Act VII), the
hero Charudatta, on seeing a Buddhist monk pass by,
exclaims to his friend Maitriyaâ€" "Ah! Here is an
inauspicious sight, a Buddhist monk coming towards
us." The Brahmin Chanakya, author of Arthashastra,
declared that, "When a person entertains in a dinner
dedicated to gods and ancestors those who are Sakyas
(Buddhists), Ajivikas, Shudras and exiled persons, a
fine of one hundred panas shall be imposed on him."
Shankaracharaya, the leader of the Brahminical
revival, struck terror into the hearts of the
Buddhists with his diatribes against their
religion.
The simplicity of the Buddha’s message, its stress
on equality and its crusade against the bloody and
costly sacrifices and ritualism of Brahminism had
attracted the oppressed casts in large numbers. The
Brahminical revivalists understood the need to
appropriate some of these finer aspects of Buddhism
and discarded some of the worst of their own practices
so as to be able to win over the masses back to the
Brahminical fold. Hence began the process of the
assimilation of Buddhism by Brahminism. The Brahimns,
who were once voracious beef-eaters, turned
vegetarian, imitating the Buddhists in this regard.
Popular devotion to the Buddha was sought to be
replaced by devotion to Hindu gods such as Rama and
Krishna. The existing version of the Mahabharata was
written in the period in which the decline of Buddhism
had already begun, and it was specially meant for the
Shudras, most of whom were Buddhists, to attract them
away from Buddhism. Brahminism, however, still
prevented the Shudras from having access to the Vedas,
and the Mahabharata was possibly written to placate
the Buddhist Shudras and to compensate them for this
discrimination. The Mahabharata incorporated some of
the humanistic elements of Buddhism to win over the
Shudras, but, overall, played its role of bolstering
the Brahminical hegemony rather well. Thus, Krishna,
in the Gita, is made to say that a person ought not to
violate the “divinely ordained†law of caste.
Eklavya is made to slice off his thumb by Drona, who
is finds it a gross violation of dharma that a mere
tribal boy should excel the Kshatriya Arjun in
archery.
The various writer of the puranas, too, carried on
this systematic campaign of hatred, slander and
calumny against the Buddhists. The Brahannardiya
Purana made it a principal sin for Brahmins to enter
the house of a Buddhist even in times of great peril.
The Vishnu Purana dubs the Buddha as Maha Moha or
‘the great seducer’. It further cautions against
the “sin of conversing with Buddhists†and lays
down that “those who merely talk to Buddhist
ascetics shall be sent to hell.†In the Gaya
Mahatmaya, the concluding section of the Vayu Purana,
the town of Gaya is identified as Gaya Asura, a demon
who had attained such holiness that all those who
saw him or touched him went straight to heaven.
Clearly, this ‘demon’ was none other the Buddha
who preached a simple way for all, including the
oppressed castes, to attain salvation. The Vayu
Purana story goes on to add that Yama, the king of
hell, grew jealous at this, possibly because less
people were now entering his domains. He appealed to
the gods to limit the powers of Asura Gaya. This the
gods, led by Vishnu, were able to do by placing a
massive stone on the “demon’s†head. This
monstrous legend signified the ultimate capture of
Budhdhism’s most holy centre by its most inveterate
foes.
Kushinagar, also known as Harramba, was one of the
most important Buddhist centres as the Buddha breathed
his last there. The Brahmins, envious of the
prosperity of this pilgrim town and in order to
discourage people from going there, invented the
absurd theory that one who dies in Harramba goes to
hell, or is reborn as an ass, while he who dies in
Kashi, the citadel of Brahminism, goes straight to
heaven. So pervasive was the belief in this bizarre
theory that when the Sufi saint Kabir died in 1518 AD
at Maghar, not far from Kushinagar, some of his Hindu
followers refused to erect any memorial in his honour
there and instead set up one at Kashi. Kabir's Muslim
followers were less superstitious. They set up a tomb
for him at Maghar itself.
In addition to vilifying the fair name of the Buddha,
the Brahminical revivalists goaded Hindu kings to
persecute and even slaughter innocent Buddhists.
Sasanka, the Shaivite Brahmin king of Bengal, murdered
the last Buddhist emperor Rajyavardhana, elder brother
of Harshavardhana, in 605 AD and then marched on to
Bodh Gaya where he destroyed the Bodhi tree under
which the Buddha had attained enlightenment. He
forcibly removed the Buddha's image from the Bodh
Vihara near the tree and installed one of Shiva in its
place. Finally, Sasanka is said to have slaughtered
all the Buddhist monks in the area around Kushinagar.
Another such Hindu king was, Mihirakula, a Shaivite,
who is said to have completely destroyed over 1500
Buddhist shrines. The Shaivite Toramana is said to
have destroyed the Ghositarama Buddhist monastery at
Kausambi.
The extermination of Buddhism in India was hastened by
the large-scale destruction and appropriation of
Buddhist shrines by the Brahmins. The Mahabodhi
Vihara at Bodh Gaya was forcibly converted into a
Shaivite temple, and the controversy lingers on till
this day. The cremation stupa of the Buddha at
Kushinagar was changed into a Hindu temple dedicated
to the obscure deity with the name of Ramhar Bhavani.
Adi Shankara is said to have established his Sringeri
Mutth on the site of a Buddhist monastery which he
took over. Many Hindu shrines in Ayodhya are said to
have once been Buddhist temples, as is the case with
other famous Brahminical temples such as those at
Sabarimala, Tirupati, Badrinath and Puri.
Sukhia Sab Sansar Khaye Aur Soye
Dukhia Das Kabir Jagey Aur Roye
The world is 'happy', eating and sleeping
The forlorn Kabir Das is awake and weeping
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