Devastation and Downfall of Buddhism in India
(extracted from Buddhist Pilgrimage, by Bro Chan Khoon San)

There were two devastations on an extensive scale of Buddhist shrines and monasteries of northern India. The first was by the Ephthalites or White Huns, who invaded India in 500-520 AD and conquered the border provinces of Gandhara and Kashmir. The Hun king, Mihirakula was a barbarian and a sworn enemy of Buddhism, bent on destroying the Buddhist establishment. The Gupta kings fought on and off against the Huns but it was not until 533 AD that Mihirakula was subjugated by Yasodharman of Mandasor. Hsüan Tsang, who passed through Gandhara and Kashmir one hundred years later, heard about the devastation and reported that in Gandhara alone,

“Mihirakula overthrew stupas and destroyed monasteries, altogether one thousand and six hundred foundations.”

At that age, Buddhism had enough vitality to heal the wounds inflicted by the Huns for over a decade. Sangha life picked up again in new monasteries built over the ruins of the demolished ones. However, in the western part of India, namely: Gandhara, Kashmir and western Uttar Pradesh, Buddhism had lost much ground to the neo-Brahmanism of the Gupta age. In the eastern part, in Magadha (Bihar) and West Bengal, it began to revive again under the Buddhist king, Harsa Vardhana (7th  century AD) and later on, under the patronage of the Pala kings (8th -12th  century AD).

This was a period when the viharas expanded from being centres of monastic training to larger institutions or Mahaviharas dedicated to a weakening of morality and to correspondto learning and scholarship. These Mahaviharas such as Nalanda, Odantapura and Vikramasila in Magadha had as many as 10,000 students from every Buddhist country. Kings, nobles, wealthy merchants and ordinary people all contributed their share towards the maintenance of these famous universities, but although their financial support made these Buddhist institutions famous and prosperous, yet they undermined the high ideals of renunciation and sacrifice on which the Sangha was founded. Philosophical speculations and logic in the Mahayana tradition to counter the realistic Nyaya position of right knowledge propounded by the Brahmin scholars of Mithila across the Ganges was the chief activ­ity of these Mahayana centres. The monks slowly became accus­tomed to an easy life devoted to academic pursuits and religious rituals and relaxed their moral code to accommodate worldly practices and beliefs. This led to the disintegration of the Order into diverse sects­ing erosion of the laity’s faith in the Sangha.

During the Pala period of its history from the 9th -11th  century AD, Buddhism became heavily adulterated by the Tantric cult, with its magic spells, yoga and practices that were completely alien to the earlier form of Buddhism. Prior to this in the Gupta period (c. 300-550 AD), the Mahayana doctrine had reached the stage whereby Arahantship was openly condemned and Bodhisattaship held up as the goal towards which every good Buddhist should aim. According to the Pali scholar Rhys Davids in his book “The History and Literature of Buddhism”, the whole exposition of this theory was set in the Lotus Sutra or the Saddharma Pundarika as it is called in Sanskrit. It was so subversive of the original Buddhism and even claimed to have been preached by the Buddha himself.

During the Gupta period, more philosophical speculations in the Mahayana tradition emerged and led to the worship of various Mahayanist gods and “Bodhisattas” conceived to symbolize the philosophical speculations. According to Rhys Davids, as time went on, converts to the Mahayana who were well acquainted with the Hindu deities of the day, conveniently adopted many Hindu deities into the Buddhist pantheon. These Hindu deities were rep­resented as “Bodhisattas” and supporters of the Buddha in order to bring about reconciliation between the two faiths and to attract more devotees.

Grand temples were built in honour of these new “Bodhisattas”, in which elaborate ceremonies were performed, which attracted peo­ple from all walks of life and encouraged different superstitious beliefs and modes of worship. These practices formed the basis for the development of Tantrayana by Buddhists who adopted the methods of Hindu Tantrists by incorporating Vedic and Hindu beliefs into the religion (refer to Indian Buddhism by Hajime Nakamura). Buddhism was now reduced to an esoteric cult in which spells and magic rites and practices supposedly capable of producing supernatural effects predominated. Tantric mystics were accepted as great leaders who claimed to have discovered the shortest route to Deliverance. In some quarters, it was believed that the “grace of the teacher” was sufficient for the realization of the Sublime. Some of these gurus openly ridiculed the monastic code and even propagated mass indulgence in wine and women. The discovery in the ruins of Nalanda of several Tantric images, all of which belonged to the Pala period of its history, provides evidence of the development of Tantrayana at Nalanda University. According to Ven. Jagdish Kashyap (Chapter 1, Path of the Buddha), Buddhism had become so polluted and weakened by these perverted forms of practice that it became practically impos­sible to revive after the destruction of the Mahayana temples and monasteries by the Muslim invaders.

The fatal blow was dealt around the turn of the 13th  century AD by the Turaskas or Khalijis from Afghanistan. They were fanati­cal Muslims, bent on conquest and destruction. By then, they had conquered the western part of Uttar Pradesh called the Doab, the region bordered by the Yamuna and the Ganges rivers, where they had settled themselves with expansionist aims. Soon they began their invasion, spreading terror and panic through all the towns and countryside in their path, and their advance posed a tremen­dous threat to all monasteries and temples of northern India. The whole doomed area in the east, ancient Magadha (Bihar) and North Bengal, fell to the marauders. Especial ferocity was directed towards Buddhist institutions with huge Buddha and “Bodhisatta” images, which were systematically destroyed or vandalised. The shaven-headed monks wearing distinctive monastic robes were easily spotted and massacred wholesale as idolaters. These grue­some killings and destruction are all on historical record.

The story of an assault upon the Mahavihara at Odantapura, Bihar in 1198 was told long afterwards, in 1243 by an eye-witness to the Persian historian Minhaz. In his book, Tabaquat-I-Nasiri, he reported as follows (refer to Buddhist Monks and Monasteries of India, Part V, 3, by Sukumar Dutt):

“Most of the inhabitants of the place were Brahmanas with shaven heads (monks). They were put to death. Large num­bers of books were found there, and when the Mahammadans saw them, they called for some person to explain the contents. But all of the men were killed. It was discovered that the whole fort and city was a place for study (madrasa): in the Hindi language the word Bihar (i.e. Vihara) means a college.”

In the destruction of the University of Nalanda, the same histor-ian recorded that thousands of monks were burned alive and yet more thousands beheaded, and the burning of the library contin­ued for several months.

The extermination of Buddhist monks dealt a fatal blow to the organization of the Sangha in India. With the monks gone, no one was left to carry on their work or lead the demoralized laity who were forcibly converted to Islam or absorbed into Hinduism and Jainism. Although the latter religions were subjected to the same persecution, their priests and leaders were not easily recognized among their people to be singled out for extermination. So they could survive and rebuild their communities, but for Buddhism in India, it was the end. The high-caste Brahmin priests had always opposed Buddhism because of its criticism of the caste system and while it was under the protection of royal patronage, they had remained silent. After the downfall of Buddhism, they could act without restraint, and began to convert Buddhist tem­ples that had escaped destruction into Hindu temples. In parts of India far from the invaders’ control, the caste system regained its dominance and under community pressures, the demoralized Buddhist laity were slowly absorbed into Hinduism. According to Ven. Bhikkhu Jagdish Kashyap, the three factors discussed earlier contributed to the downfall of Buddhism in India, namely:

• Decay and disintegration of the Sangha.

• Extermination of the Sangha by external invaders.

• Internal opposition from the Hindu caste system.