"The various writers 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 fewer 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. ..."
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 revolutionary - 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 Brahminical 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 varnas - Kshatriya, Brahmin,
Vaishya and Sudra - 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."
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 wipe out 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 Maitriya "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 finds it a gross violation of dharma that a mere tribal boy should
excel the Kshatriya Arjun in archery.
The various writers 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 fewer 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.
