Buddhism in India

expansion, treating outside countries as those of impure barbarians,

or mlecchas; rural and agrarian but without giving real status to

agrarian producers. Its pre-eminence in India signified a new era of

‘feudalism’ that meant economic backwardness and the dominance

of caste in society. While many sections of the masses became

Muslim to identify themselves with a new, militant and egalitarian

religion, for those who remained within the Brahmanic fold, a

revolt against their condemnation to low status could be expressed

through bhakti devotionalism. But this, as we shall see, had serious

limitations.

The Defeat of Buddhism in India 185

the problem of order and disintegration of tribal communities at a
‘spiritual-psychological level’ Buddhism had encouraged a ‘with-
drawal from the political’—in contrast to the ‘code of governance’
presumably given in the dharma of Brahmanic Hinduism (Drekmeier
1962: 294–300).
However, the differences are crucial. Buddhism did survive in
China—notably, what we know as the Pure Land and Zen forms
of Buddhism flourished after this time. Buddhist records survived,
as did groups of people who defined themselves as Buddhists. The
notion of a ‘withdrawal from the political’ cannot explain the dra-
matically different fate of Buddhism in the two societies; it cannot
explain the disappearance of Buddhism in India.
It would appear that Brahmanism and Buddhism were much
more in contradiction with each other than Buddhism was with
Confucianism and Taoism. The crucial issue was that of social hier-
archy, which for Brahmanism included caste and the varnashrama
dharma. This could not be reconciled with Buddhism. The family-
oriented culture of Confucianism also was in conflict with the
universalistic ethics of Buddhism, but the differences were not so
great, and the rationality of Confucianism proved something of a
bridge. Confucianism fostered an elitist society, but one with enough
universalistic values to allow mobility for the poor and ‘low’-born,
something that was anathema to Brahmanism.
Brahmanism was also able, precisely because of caste, to pene-
trate to lower levels of village and city society than Confucianism
by itself could in China. Despite the penetration the differences and
gaps remained, in that the culture and religious expression of the
‘Dalit-Bahujan’ masses was sharply different from that of the more
Brahmanised rural and urban elites. But these masses also had their
very traditions and cultures interpreted by Brahmanism; they were
unable to maintain their own institutions. Almost none could
become intellectuals; those who became rulers or politically and
economically powerful local groups had to accept Brahmanic intel-
lectual and social hegemony. Brahmans themselves continued to
have significant economic and political, as well as cultural–religious
power and constituted the single most powerful and wealthy social
group, knit together by a sophisticated idelogy and wide institutional
networks.
Brahmanism, in contrast to Buddhism and Islam, was inward-
looking. It considered India as its ‘holy’ land but was fearful of

184 Buddhism in India