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A Study of the Nilamata-Aspects of Hinduism in Ancient Kashmir
rituals in Kashmir. The section starts as follows: "Obrahman, when the twenty-eighth kali-yuga arrives, Vişņu, the protector of the world, shall become a preceptor of the world named Buddha." (v. 684). After this, the text explains in minute detail how and when the people should celebrate the Buddha. The reason why they worship Him lies in the very Hinduistic belief that Sākyamuni the Buddha is none other than an incarnation (avatāra) of Vişnu himself: through the former, they indirectly worship the latter. Hence the Buddha is treated as one of the innumerable deities in Hinduism. It is certain that in this context Buddhism was not a menace to the orthodox religion. That is, the NM suggests that Buddhism and the orthodox power of that time got along together.
On the whole it is plausible to assume that this kind of peaceful coexistence continued as a relationship of the two religious powers for the following centuries. As seen below, however, it is certain that this amity between them continued not uniformly but only intermittently through the history of Kashmir.
First, let us pick up an account of the RT (i, 177–184) to show the antagonism of the orthodox side to Buddhism in the reign of Abhimanyu I. It is summarized as follows: Buddhists who were under the protection of bodhisattva Nāgārjuna defeated their opponents and became prosperous for a while. However, as they did not keep the rituals taught by Nīla in the NM, nāgas were stoppped from receiving offerings from the people. The nāgas got angry and caused a heavy snowfall in the country in order to afflict the Buddhists, as a result of which the Buddhists perished at last. Meanwhile, brahmins who kept offering to the nāgas survived. Then a brahmin named Candradeva appeared and did penance to please nāga Nīla, so that Nīla, transforming himself into Candradeva, stopped the snow and restored the rituals which were once prescribed by Nīla himself. Thus thanks to this second Candradeva, intolerable damages owing to the Buddhists were finally stopped.
It is interesting that, though this story is composed in relation to the NM, which is named, the attitudes toward Buddhism are quite different from the descriptions of the NM. The story is indeed of a legendary character, but it does not necessarily undermine its importance; it is probable that, in some period before Kalhaņa, people on the orthodox side felt hostile toward Buddhism to the degree that they inspired such a sequal to the NM.
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Buddhism, it seems, found opposition from the preceding orthodox power in Kashmir from the beginning. As referred to above, Buddhism in Kashmir
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