The
Decline of Buddhism in India
The Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Chuang (630 A.D.) saw images that had
sunk into the damp Indian soil, and was told local prophecies to the effect
that the religion of the Teacher would vanish completely when the image had
sunk out of sight altogether. Shashanka, king of Bengal, who had
systematically destroyed Buddhist religious structures, cut down and burned
the sacred tree at Gaya under which the Buddha had attained enlightenment
twelve centuries earlier.
The tree was soon nursed back to growth from a sprout discovered
by Pumavarman, the last descendant of Ashoka. Harsha repulsed Shashanka,
restored the devastated Buddhist foundations, and built many new ones.
Monasteries by the thousand still housed and fed a vast army of monks. The
richly endowed University of Nalanda was at the zenith of its fame. All
seemed well.
The real damage came from within, and may be discerned in the
report of the same Chinese traveller, though he was perhaps not conscious
of what his words signified:
"(The Buddhist scholar who) can explain three classes (of
sacred texts) has allotted to him different servants to attend and obey
him. ...He who can explain five classes is then allotted an elephant
carriage. He who can explain six classes of books is given a surrounding
escort if one of the assembly distinguish himself (in disputations) by
refined language, subtle investigation, deep penetration, and severe logic,
then he is mounted on an elephant covered with precious ornaments, and
conducted by a numerous suite to the gates of the abbey. If, on the
contrary, one of the disputants breaks down in his argument, or uses poor
and inelegant phrases, or if he violates a rule in logic, they proceed to
disfigure his face with red and white, and cover his body with dirt
and dust, and then carry him off to some deserted spot or leave him in a
ditch. Thus they distinguish between the meritorious and the worthless,
between the wise and the foolish."
This was surely not the way merit had been judged in the days of
the Buddha. The original function of the ever-wandering almsmen had been to
explain the way of righteousness to all, in the simplest possible words,
and the languages of the common people. The new class of disputatious
residents of wealthy monasteries cared nothing for the villagers whose
surplus product maintained them in luxury. The original rules laid down and
followed by the Buddha had permitted only the mendicant's trifling
possessions without even the touch of gold, silver or ornaments. The
Buddhas of Ajanta are depicted wearing jewelled crowns, or seated upon the
costliest thrones.
Similarly, the old Buddhism had turned Ashoka away from war to
the path of peace. His edicts state that the army would henceforth be used
only for spectacles and parades. The devout emperor Harsha, on the other
hand, managed to reconcile war with Buddhism just as he reconciled his
worship of the Sun god and Maheshwar. Harsha's army increased during thirty
years of constant, aggressive warfare to 60,000 elephants, 100,000 cavalry,
and a still larger number of foot soldiers. He was Buddhist enough to
forgive the assassin whom he had disarmed, when the assembled kings and
nobles demanded the death punishment. The common people, who had to pay for
his wars and for the triumphal pageantry, might have preferred his putting
the assassin to death and killing less people on fewer battlefields.
In a word, Buddhism had become uneconomic. The innumerable
monasteries and their pampered inmates were a counterpart of the costly
military establishment. Buddhism had, from the very beginning, favoured the
growth of a universal monarchy which would stop petty warfare. The Buddha
is chakravartin, spiritual counterpart of the emperor. But such
great, personally administered empires had themselves become uneconomic;
Harsha's was about the last of the sort in India. Thereafter, kingdoms were
much smaller till feudalism from below gave the state a new basis of feudal
landowners. The administration gradually drifted into the hands of a feudal
hierarchy growing from below with new (feudal) property rights in land.
The village defeated both the empire and the organised religion
that accompanied it. The self-contained village was hereafter the norm of
production. Taxes had to be collected in kind and consumed locally, for
there was not enough trade to allow their conversion into c1ash. Transport
of grain and raw material over long distances would have been most
difficult under medieval Indian conditions. Harsha travelled constantly
with court and army, through his extensive domains. The Chinese piligrim
states that Indians rarely used coins for trade, which was conducted by
barter. This seems confirmed by the absence of coins struck by Harsha,
which contrasts with the tremendous hoards of punch-marked coins that had
circu1alted under the Mauryans.
Buddhism owed its initial success precisely to its fulfillment of
a great social need. Society in the Gangetic basin of the 6th century B.C.
was not organised into peaceful villages producing mostly for themselves.
The much thinner population was divided into a set of warring semi-tribal
principalities, and some tribes not yet on the level of agrarian production
with the plough. Vedic Brahaminism and tribal cults were fit only for the
pastoral tribe at war with all neighbours. The Vedic animal sacrifices were
far too onerous for a developing agrarian economy. The thin pre-Mauryan
settlement required trade in metals, salt, and cloth over long distances,
which could not be conducted without the protection of a powerful state.
The passage from a group of tribes to a universal society, therefore,
needed a new social philosophy.
That the universal monarchy and the religion of the universal
society were parallel is proved by the rise of both in Magadha, at about
the same time. Not only Buddhism, but numerous other contemporary Magadhan
sects preached about the same thing: the Jains, Ajivikas, and others all
denied the validity of Vedic sacrifice, and the need for killing. Buddhism
accompanied and protected the first traders into wild country, peopled by
savage tribes. This is shown by the ancient monuments at Junnar, Karle,
Nasik, Ajanta, and elsewhere on the junctions of primitive trade routes.
The major civilizing function of Buddhism had ended by the
seventh century A.D. The ahimsa doctrine was universally admitted,
if not practised. Vedic sacrifices had been abandoned except by some rare
princeling whose revivalist attempt had little effect upon the general
economy. The new problem was to induce docility in the village cultivators,
without an excessive use of force. This was done by religion, but not by
Buddhism. The class structure in the villages appeared as caste, always
scorned by the Buddhists. Primitive tribesmen were enrolled as new castes.
Both tribesman and peasant relied heavily upon ritual, which the Buddhist
monk was forbidden to practise; ritual remained a monopoly of the Brahmin.
Moreover, the Brahmin at that time was a pioneer who could
stimulate production, for he had a good working calendar for predicting the
times of ploughing, sowing, harvest. He knew something of new crops, and
trade possibilities. He was not a drain upon production as had been his
sacrificing ancestors, or the large Buddhist monasteries. A compromise
could also be effected by making the Buddha an avatara of Vishnu.
So, formal Buddhism inevitably faded away.
Its main lesson need never be lost: that good thoughts require
cultivation and training of the mind by the individual's personal efforts,
no less carefully than good singing that of the voice or craftsmanship that
of the hand. The value of the thoughts, on the other hand, is to be judged
by the social advance which they encourage.
From the
Times of India, May 24, 1956, by kind permission of the editor; the title
has been changed from "Buddhism in history" and minor corrections
made. The topic may be pursued further, by those interested, in my book:
Introduction to the Study of Indian History (Bombay, 1956).
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