Buddhism in India

The Defeat of Buddhism in India 177

were concerned about Muslims as well as the challenge from a

growing Tibetan power. It was on the basis of this alliance and by

using soldiers recruited from central Asia and the Punjab that the

Karkota king, Lalitaditya, embarked on a ‘world conquest’, or

digvijay, of India between 713 to 747 CE, conquering Kanauj, one-

time capital of Harsha, then moving through Orissa to the gulf of

Bengal, then to the Deccan and Konkan, returned through Gujarat

to Kashmir. This event is seen by many historians as being the turn-

ing point from the ‘classical’ to the ‘medieval’ period of India. And

with the amassment of huge wealth, Lalitaditya was able to build

shrines, monuments and temples, including a huge temple to the

sun at Martanda that marked the revival of Brahmanism in

Kashmir (ibid.: 237–54).

Following this the Palas of Bengal came to dominate in the

second half of the 8th century. The most powerful ruler was

Dharmapala (769–815 CE), who ruled Bengal, Bihar, Orissa,

Nepal and Assam, and also brought Kanauj under his control. For

the first time, the historic lands of Buddhism were conquered from

the east. From the west, the Arabs advanced into Sind, while Tibet

arose as a new power and the Tang dynasty came to control in

China. These factors conditioned predominance of the Palas. In

contrast to the other rulers, the Palas all throughout their rule were

major supporters of Buddhism, though they also patronized

Saivism and Vaisnavism and supported Brahman migration from

the Kanauj area. It was under them that the crucial monastic

university of Vikramsila attained importance, and it was through

Bengal that Buddhism was taken up in Tibet. The full-scale upsurge

of Brahmanism came later with the Senas (1097–1223), the

migrant warriors from Karnataka in south India who were fierce

Shaivites, and sponsored Hindu cults throughout Bengal (ibid.:

259–72; see also Eaton 1997: 9–16).

The next crucial rulers, according to Wink, were the Gurjara-

Pratiharas, who had emerged in north Gujarat and Rajasthan and

were indigenous pastoral and hunting groups as well as some immi-

grant Hunas. These groups later formed the Rajputs, who went on to

become the typical landed gentry and recognised ‘Kshatriyas’ of north

India. With them the ancient Brahman–Kshatriya antagonisms, sym-

bolised in the story of Parashuram killing off all the Kshatriyas, were

soon replaced by a symbiotic relationship, as the Rajputs became the

focus of a new Brahman-controlled mythologising. They became the

they could learn to live with mleccha rulers if these were willing to
enforce the varnashrama dharma. Ironically, the alliance of
Brahmans with Muslim rulers (and later with British colonial rule)
was almost as effective as it was with officially ‘Hindu’ kings.
Wink’s massive study, Al-Hind, notes the long-standing domi-
nance of Buddhism, and suggests that it was only gradually, and
with the support of kings, was it superseded by Brahmanism. This
in turn was linked with the external dominance of Islam:

As the inscriptional sources throughout India make clear it was the

power of the kings which was decisive in the restoration of the new

brahmanical order. Brahmanism, culminating in the cults of Shiva and

Vishnu under the patronage of regionally entrenched kings, with huge

stone temples clustering in newly arising regional capitals which

accommodated peripatetic courts, and sendentarization and settle-

ment of nomadic or mobile groups, accompanied by agricultural

intensification—this was the ‘vertical’ pattern which, with its more

solid forms, descended on the open-ended world of the itinerant

trader and the Buddhist monk.

But, he adds, this did not mean that trade disappeared; rather the
‘increasing density of regional economies was a function of India’s
increased role in world trade’, a role that now took place under the
aegis of the Muslims, the hegemonic commercial civilisation of the
age. ‘This entire development is unthinkable without the new cos-
mopolitan religion of Islam superseding Buddhism at the same time
that the ‘brahmanical restoration’ takes place’ (Wink 1990: 230).
Why did this happen? Wink stresses the connection between the
rise and fall of Indian kingdoms and external trade links, especially
with the Arab-dominated trade to the west, and with a resurgent
China to the east. The ‘medieval’ period in India was one of an
intensification of agriculture, however the deepening of regional
economies was related to a world trade, dominated by Islam.
Brahmanised regional kingdoms could hope to achieve all-India
hegemony only through alliances with Muslim and other external
powers.
Wink’s historical survey shows some of these processes in his
review of the dynasties that dominated India in the last half of the
first millennium. The first was the Karkota dynasty in Kashmir,
which began early in the 7th century, dominated trade routes to the
west and to Rome, and made an alliance with the Chinese who

176 Buddhism in India