ments, donating property, such as the incomes of villages, for the support of
monks, and protecting previous property donations by leaving them exempt
from taxation. Religious donations were most often made by private persons,
such as merchants or female relatives of the royal family; but this was especially
common in periods when the state also gave its protection and support. Some
states threw their material support heavily toward a particular religion, but
many rather evenhandedly patronized all the important sects. A big difference
in the support of Buddhism and Hinduism is that the former was much more
institutionally organized, and hence patronage took the form of massive prop-
ertied foundations; whereas the Brahman priests were from landholding fami-
lies and did not depend on donations for their survival.
The scale of political support for a religion was largely a matter of the ex-
tent of material patronage. At the extreme there was exclusion and persecution:
confiscating property, prohibiting ceremonies, or killing monks and priests. But
these actions only tipped the balance when the material base was weak; and
that base depended not only on state patronage but also on the strength of
religious carriers outside the state. By these criteria, let us consider how the
various religions fared under different regimes.buddhist monasticism
Buddhist patronage is easiest to document because it took the form of substan-
tial material edifices. Most of the surviving works of art and architecture for
India until after the fall of the Maurya dynasty are from Buddhist sites, and
when Hindu temples expanded in the Gupta period and thereafter, they fol-
lowed Buddhist models (Craven, 1975: 117–121; Dutt, 1962: 142–143, 204–
205). During the Maurya Empire, Buddhism began to spread outside its
Magadha homeland, encouraged in its missionary efforts by the wide reach of
the Maurya regime. The emperor Ashoka became a lay Buddhist, and promul-
gated Buddhist principles in public edicts while prohibiting the sacrificial cults
as contrary to Buddhist benevolence. This is the closest we get to all-out
religious conflict; the successor regime, the Shungas, not only reinstituted the
sacrifices but also persecuted Buddhism, though apparently without much
success (Dutt, 1962: 81). The proliferation of Buddhism south of the Vindhya
range, which cuts laterally across central India, dates from around 200 b.c.e.
down to 100 c.e.; in the Andhra kingdom in the 200s c.e., magnificent mon-
asteries were built on donations from commercial wealth and aristocratic
families, while kings gave immunity from taxation (Dutt, 1962: 114–133, 158).
The post-Maurya period also saw the beginning of state support in outlying
kingdoms of the northwest, including the kings of Kashmir, whose patronage
continued a last outpost of Buddhism down to 900–1100 c.e.
The Gupta Empire was a time of Hindu cultural efflorescence, but in the182 • (^) Intellectual Communities: Asian Paths