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BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM.
the Sad - dharma Pundaríka, which, as I have mentioned, had been translated into Chinese before the end of the third century, and shows that the career of the Buddhists had not been one of uninterrupted success, even at so early a date, although the opposition had not been such as to arrest their progress: this, if it at all occurred, was the work of a later period, but we have no very positive information on the subject. According to Madhava Acharya, a celebrated writer of the fourteenth century, the Buddhists of the south of India were exposed to a sanguinary persecution at the instigation of Kumárila Bhatta“, the great authority of the Mímánsakas, who, as he preceded Sankara Acharya, may have lived in the sixth or seventh century, or earlier. Madhava asserts that, at his recommendation, a prince named Sudhanwan issned orders to put the Buddhists to death throughout the whole of India:
“A-setor-á-tushadre tu Bauddhánám vriddabálakán
na hanti yah sa hantavyo bhrityán ityanwasád niipah." “The king commanded his servants to put to death
the old men and the children of the Banddhas, from the bridge of Ráma to the snowy mountain; let him who slays not be slain." We do not know who Sudhanwan was, but his commands were not likely to be obeyed from Cape Comorin to the Himalaya, and whatever truth there
* [Colebrooke, Essays, p. 190. Lasseu, Ind. Alt., IV, 708 ff.]
