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KANISHKA
319
nearly two hundred thousand of the Buddhist Order, of whom three-fourths still adhered to the older forms of the faith, and one-fourth were Mahāyānist. Brahmin accounts attribute the final stages in the movement to a furious persecution brought about at the instigation of the great brahmin apostle, Kumärila Bhaṭṭa, in the first half of the eighth century. This view, having received the support of the distinguished European scholars, Wilson and Colebrooke,' has naturally been widely repeated until we find the Rev. W. T. Wilkins saying:
"The disciples of Buddha were so ruthlessly persecuted that all were either slain, exiled, or made to change their faith. There is scarcely a case on record where a religious persecution was so successfully carried out as that by which Buddhism was driven out of India.
2
I do not believe a word of it. In the Journal of the Pali Text Society for 1896, I have discussed the question in detail, and have come to the conclusion, entirely endorsed by the late Professor Bühler,3 that the misconception has arisen from an erroneous inference drawn from expressions of vague boasting, of ambiguous import, and doubtful authority. We must seek elsewhere for the causes of the decline of the Buddhist faith; and they will be found, I think, partly in the changes that took place in the faith itself, partly in the changes that took place in the Wilson, Sanskrit Dictionary, p. xix.; Colebrooke, Essays, vol. i., P. 323.
Daily Life and Work in India (London, 18SS), p. 110. 3 7. P. T. S., 1896, pp. 108-110.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
