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હેતુબિંદુનો પરિચય - ૧૭૯ to have conceded that Dharmakirti understood Dignaga better than he could do it himself. With the assent of his teacher Dharmakirti then began the composition of a great work in mnemonic verse containing a thorough and enlarged commentary on the chief work of Dignaga.
"The remaining of his life was spent, as usual, in the composition of works, teahing, public discussions and active propaganda. He died in Kalinga in a monastery founded by him, surrounded by his pupils.
"Notwithstanding the great scope and success of his propaganda, he could only retard, but not stop the process of decay which befell Buddhism on its native soil. Buddhism in India was doomed. The most talented propagandist could not change the run of history. The time of Kumarila and Sankaracarya, the great champions of brahmanical revival and opponents of Buddhism, was approaching. Tradition represents Dharmakirti as having combated them in public disputation and having been victorious. But this is only an afterthought and a pious desire on the part of his followers. At the same time it is an indirect confession that these great brahmin teachers had met with no Dharmakirti to oppose them. What might have been the deeper cause of the decline of Buddhism in India proper and its survival in the border lands, we never perhaps will sufficiently know, but historians are unanimous in telling us that Bhddhism at the time of Dharmakirti was not on the ascendency, it was not flourishing in the same degree as at the time of the brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu. The popular masses began to deturn their face from that philosophic, critical and pessimistic religion, and reverted to the worship of the great brahmin gods. Buddhism was beginnings its migration to the north where it found a new home in Tibet, Mongolia and other countries.
“Dharmakirti seems to have had a forboding of the
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