VAJRAYANAAND LATER INDIAN BUDDHISM 137suspicion; the remnants of the Sangha may have been so lax in their conduct
that they did not inspire support; or it may be that Buddhist teachings could
not provide the nationalist ideology that the local kings desired as they at-
tempted to throw off the Muslim yoke. Because it took the Hindus from the
thirteenth to the eighteenth century to unite their forces in an attempt to
drive the Muslims from power, Indian society throughout this period was too
unstable to support a thriving Sangha. Ultimately, the British rather than the
Indians were the ones who united the country, and the return to stability did
bring about modest attempts at a Buddhist revival.
The demise of the Sangha, however, did not mean that Buddhist doctrines
disappeared from India without trace. We have noted how Buddhism was in-
fluenced by Hinduism during their many centuries of coexistence; influences
went the other way as well. The Buddhist doctrine of harmlessness had in-
spired the brahmins to do the Buddhists one better by becoming vegetarians;
the Buddhist ideal of the renunciate life had been incorporated into the Hindu
life cycle as the fourth and final stage oflife. Specific Buddhist groups had also
had an effect. The Advaita Vedanta school founded by Gauqapada and Sankara
in the sixth and seventh centuries applied Yogacara ideas to the interpretation
ofVedic texts. The Sahajayana movement ofSaraha and Kal).ha influenced the
Bengali minstrel saints, including the fifteenth-century mystic Kabir, and the
Bengali Bauls. In a more pervasive manner, the Buddhist notion ofkarma as a
moral rather than a ritual force had permeated Indian thought, as had the no-
tion ofDharma as rectitude of the mind rather than Vedic orthopraxy. The
measure of how quietly pervasive these Buddhist ideas became in Indian soci-
ety is indicated by what happened when the Asokan edicts were deciphered
and translated in the 1iJ:te nineteenth century (see Section 3.3). According to
many Indians, there ~as nothing particularly Buddhist about Asoka's message,
for it conveyed what they regarded as the basic ideals of Indian morality as a
whole. Perhaps the best symbol of the continuing Buddhist influence on In-
dian life is the Dharma wheel that the Indians placed in the middle of their
flag on gaining independence from the British. It was the only symbol that all
segments of Indian society would accept as a sign of what united them.
6.4.1 Buddhism in Nepal
The Nepal Valley contains some of the few surviving remnants of medieval
Indian Buddhism. In the material sense, these remnants fall into two areas:
texts and the arts. Unlike the Tibetans, theNepalese have continued to use
Sanskrit texts for their studies and rituals; thus their libraries have preserved
the Sanskrit originals for many Indian Buddhist texts that were otherwise lost.
In terms of art, the monastic buildings still surviving in Patan seem to be faith-
ful replicas of the great Indian universities, whereas Nepalese painting and
statuary preserve the medieval Pala style. In the social sense, however, the pic-
ture is more complex, as the Nepalese have evolved new patterns to replace
the monastic Sangha and have developed their own distinctive way of defining
Buddhist religious identity.