VAJRAYANAAND LATER INDIAN BUDDHISM 135the Gangetic Plain, but the religion was already losing ground in the south
and the northwest. In the south, devotional Hinduism, spread by the Tamil
minstrel saints, was corning to the fore, at the same time that Sankara was re-
vitalizing Advaita Vedanta. Hindu temples were being built, but no new Bud-
dhist ones. In Andhra, Hsiian-tsang found only 20 monasteries, with a total of
3,000 residents. Many monasteries were already deserted.
Far northwest of India, the Ephthalite Huns had devastated the monaster-
ies of Gandhara in the sixth century; Hsiian-tsang found one thousand monas-
teries in ruins, stupas destroyed, and Hindu temples flourishing. Buddhist
institutions in Uddiyana prospered in the fifth and part of the sixth centuries,
but were later devastated by natural disasters.
Muslim Turks began attacking western and northwestern India in the
eighth century, destroying the great university at Valabhi (see Section 4.4).
Through a long series of bitterly fought battles, they encroached further and
further into Indian territory until they sacked Mathura in the eleventh cen-
tury. There they were held in check for 150 years. The utter destruction
caused by this Turkish warfare was something totally new to the Indians, who
were more familiar with war as a chivalrous spectator sport among kings. The
Turks followed a scorched-earth policy, looting and destroying thousands of
temples and putting the populace to the sword. Huge numbers of refugees, lay
and monastic, fled east to the Buddhist homeland in the Gangetic Plain, where
the Pala empire offered them shelter.
As we have noted, the main centers ofBuddhist strength in its homeland
were its great universities, which won support even from the Hindu Pala dy-
nasty for their role in producing educated civil servants. These high-profile
institutions, however, required high maintenance. Because the local popula-
tion could not support all the student-monks through alms, there was a con-
stant need to finance the students' and professors' material needs. Evidence
suggests that by the eleventh century, the Buddhist universities were in a pre-
carious financial position. Atisa, the great missionary to Sumatra and Tibet,
for example, had to charge for his services, the money being sent to his home
university. It is a matter of conjecture why the universities were placed in this
position. The Palas themselves may have been weakened financially, or they
may have decided that the universities were no longer worth their support, or
both. We do know that university monks were involved in politics; this may
have cast an unfavorable light on their institutions. We also know that the
Palas themselves were declining politically, for the Senas seized power in 1162,
and the empire fragmented into small states.
The Palas' decline opened the way for the Muslim Turks to come sweep-
ing though the Gangetic Plain at the end of the twelfth century. The small
states were unable to put up any resistance, and the universities were left de-
fenseless: their wealth plundered, their inhabitants massacred, their buildings
and libraries put to the torch. Because the universities had been the reposito-
ries not only of Buddhist traditions but also of secular arts and sciences, their
annihilation was a devastating blow to Indian culture as a whole. Indian Bud-
dhism never recovered, although it continued to subsist in isolated pockets,