________________
318
BUDDHIST INDIA
literary language, must have come a gradual increase in the deference and respect paid to the acknowledged masters of that tongue. There were other reasons, of course; and there was action and reaction in all these matters. But the result is very striking. Threefourths or more of the persons named, and the objects of donation specified, in all the inscriptions throughout India, from Asoka's time to Kanishka's,' are Buddhist, and the majority of the remainder are Jain. From that time onwards the brahmins, the gods they patronised, the sacrifices they carried out, receive ever-increasing notice till the position of things is exactly reversed, and in the fifth century A.D. three-fourths are brahmin, and the majority of the rest are Jain. This is the clearest evidence of a strange revulsion of feeling. What had been the predominant national faith has become the faith of a minority. India, which can fairly, down to the time of Kanishka, be called “ Buddhist India," ceases to be so. And the process goes on, slowly indeed but continually, until there is not a Buddhist left in the land where Buddhism arose.
How slow the process was is shown by the accounts of the state of things when the Chinese pilgrims travelled in India. Fa Hian, in the early years of the fourth century A.D., finds Buddhism nearly everywhere in decay. He unfortunately gives no figures. But Yuan Chwang, in the seventh century, has done so. These I have examined in detail," and the result shows still, at that time, in India,
"3rd century 13.C, to 2nd century A.D). > Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society', 1591, PP. 418-421,
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
