The Defeat of Buddhism in India 171This destruction is taken as the final blow and marks the end of
Taranatha’s chronicle, as monks fled from there to Nepal, to the
south-west of India, and to south-east Asia.^4
Violence in history is easily forgotten. A major example in India
may be the Kalinga war, which is attested to by Asoka’s own inscrip-
tions. Visiting the country of Kalinga in the 7th century, Hsuan Tsang
described it as once having a dense population but then being depop-
ulated, but gave as explanation only a story about a fabulous rishi
who cursed the people. In the plethora of Buddhist legends about
Asoka, which stress his wickedness before the conversion, the devas-
tating results of his own major war were not included.
The ravages of time have also played a role in erasing the
Buddhist heritage of India. The glory of Ajanta’s paintings could
survive until British times simply because the cave region was so
inaccessible, while other monuments were simply buried—until
recovery in the 19th and 20th century led to a new process of theft
(with important relics ending up in European museums or private
collections), destruction due to failures in maintenance including
the failure of the Archaeological Survey of India today! (Menon
2001; Kalidas 2001).^5
In the end, the patronage of kings was important both for
Buddhism and Brahmanism, and the gradual conversion of kings to
Brahmanic ideology proved decisive. Rulers gave financial support
to Brahmans, took the responsibility of enforcing varna laws and
discriminating against ‘heretical’ sects, and refused state protection
to their persons and property—if they did not actively murder and
loot them themselves.
Buddhists philosophised this decline; the notion of constant
change was after all a major theme. The idea that the Dhammamonumental cave-temple construction in a mountainous area in
Vidarbha, said to have been done by the Satavahana king under the
instigation of Nagarjuna, that was totally destroyed (ibid.: 214–17).
The late 16th century and early 17th century Tibetan Buddhist
chronicler Taranatha describes many more incidents, referring
to the ‘three hostilities’ against Buddhism, three periods when
Buddhism was under violent attack. The first was that of Pushyamitra
Shunga at the end of the Mauryan period:
The Brahmana king Pusyamitra, along with other tirthikas, started
war and they burned down numerous monasteries from Madhyadesa
to Jalandhara. They also killed a number of vastly learned monks. But
most of them fled to other countries. As a result, within five years the
Doctrine was extinct in the north (Taranatha1990: 121).The ‘second hostility’ appears to be that of Mihirakula (the fiercely
anti-Buddhist king who raided north India in the 6th century),
though Taranatha does not use the name and instead says a
‘Persian’ king destroyed Magadha with a Turuska army, ruined
many temples and damaged Nalanda. The ‘third hostility’ had
appears in the south, with less overt reliance on state power; it
describes two Brahman beggars, one of whom gains magical powers
to start a fire that consumes 84 temples and huge numbers of valu-
able documents in the country of Krishnaraja (Taranatha1990:
138, 141–42).
When fierce debates with Brahmanic pandits began to take place,
these were often marked by violence. In Orissa, writes Taranatha,
after one debate
the tirthikasbecame victorious and destroyed many temples of the
insiders. They robbed in particular the centers for the Doctrine and
took away the deva-dasas[vihara slaves]....[Many debates were lost
in the south and] as a result, there were many incidents of the prop-
erty and followers of the insiders being robbed by the tirthika
Brahmans (Taranatha1990: 226).Finally, while Turks destroyed Vikramasila and Odantapura in the
12th century, it is noted that this happened because they had mis-
taken them for forts and in fact the king had stationed soldiers
there (Taranatha1990: 318–19): the Turks made a simple mistake!
170 Buddhism in India
(^4) A recent book, by Richard Eaton (2000: 94–132) points out that of the sixty thousand-
odd cases of temple destruction by Muslim rulers cited by contemporary Hindutva
sources one may identify only eighty instances ‘whose historicity appears to be rea-
sonably certain’. He also makes it clear that Hindu kings raided Hindu kingdoms,
destroyed temples and captured idols; Muslim rulers committed atrocities against
Muslims. His conclusion is that almost all cases of violence were primarily political,
i.e., to establish symbolic as well as real power.
(^5) Of course, restoration techniques are also improving, and Indians and ‘foreign’
advisors are learning from each other.