"There can be no doubt that the fall of Buddhism in India
was due to the invasions of the Musalmans," writes the
author. "Islam came out as the enemy of the 'But'. The
word 'But,' as everybody knows, is an Arabic word and
means an idol. Not many people, however, know that the
derivation of the word 'But' is the Arabic corruption of
Buddha. Thus the origin of the word indicates that in the
Moslem mind idol worship had come to be identified with
the Religion of the Buddha. To the Muslims, they were one
and the same thing. The mission to break the idols thus
became the mission to destroy Buddhism. Islam destroyed
Buddhism not only in India but wherever it went. Before
Islam came into being Buddhism was the religion of
Bactria, Parthia, Afghanistan, Gandhar and Chinese
Turkestan, as it was of the whole of Asia...."
A communal historian of the RSS-school?
But Islam struck at Hinduism also. How is it that it was
able to fell Buddhism in India but not Hinduism?
Hinduism had State-patronage, says the author. The
Buddhists were so persecuted by the "Brahmanic rulers", he
writes, that, when Islam came, they converted to Islam: this
swelled the ranks of Muslims but in the same stroke
drained those of Buddhism. But the far more important
cause was that while the Muslim invaders butchered both --
Brahmins as well as Buddhist monks -- the nature of the
priesthood in the case of the two religions was different --
"and the difference is so great that it contains the whole
reason why Brahmanism survived the attack of Islam and
why Buddhism did not."
For the Hindus, every Brahmin was a potential priest. No
ordination was mandated. Neither anything else. Every
household carried on rituals -- oblations, recitation of
particular mantras, pilgrimages, each Brahmin family
made memorizing some Veda its very purpose.... By
contrast, Buddhism had instituted ordination, particular
training etc. for its priestly class. Thus, when the invaders
massacred Brahmins, Hinduism continued. But when they
massacred the Buddhist monks, the religion itself was
killed.
Describing the massacres of the latter and the destruction of
their vihars, universities, places of worship, the author
writes: "The Musalman invaders sacked the Buddhist
Universities of Nalanda, Vikramshila, Jagaddala,
Odantapuri to name only a few. They raised to the ground
Buddhist monasteries with which the country was studded.
The monks fled away in thousands to Nepal, Tibet and
other places outside India. A very large number were killed
outright by the Muslim commanders. How the Buddhist
priesthood perished by the sword of the Muslim invaders
has been recorded by the Muslim historians themselves.
Summarizing the evidence relating to the slaughter of the
Buddhist Monks perpetrated by the Musalman General in
the course of his invasion of Bihar in 1197 AD,
Mr. Vincent Smith says, "....Great quantities of plunder
were obtained, and the slaughter of the 'shaven headed
Brahmans', that is to say the Buddhist monks, was so
thoroughly completed, that when the victor sought for
someone capable of explaining the contents of the books in
the libraries of the monasteries, not a living man could be
found who was able to read them. 'It was discovered,' we
are told, 'that the whole of that fortress and city was a
college, and in the Hindi tongue they call a college Bihar.'
"Such was the slaughter of the Buddhist priesthood
perpetrated by the Islamic invaders. The axe was struck at
the very root. For by killing the Buddhist priesthood, Islam
killed Buddhism. This was the greatest disaster that befell
the religion of the Buddha in India...."
The writer? B. R. Ambedkar.
But today the fashion is to ascribe the extinction of
Buddhism to the persecution of Buddhists by Hindus, to the
destruction of their temples by the Hindus. One point is
that the Marxist historians who have been perpetrating this
falsehood have not been able to produce even an iota of
evidence to substantiate the concoction. In one typical
instance, three inscriptions were cited. The indefatigable
Sita Ram Goel looked them up. Two of the inscriptions
had absolutely nothing to do with the matter. And the third
told a story which had the opposite import than the one
which the Marxist historian had insinuated: a Jain king had
himself taken the temple from Jain priests and given it to
the Shaivites because the former had failed to live up to
their promise. Goel repeatedly asked the historian to point
to any additional evidence or to elucidate how the latter had
suppressed the import that the inscription in its entirety
conveyed. He waited in vain. The revealing exchange is
set out in Goel's monograph, "Stalinist 'Historians' Spread
the Big Lie."
Marxists cite only two other instances of Hindus having
destroyed Buddhist temples. These too it turns out yield to
completely contrary explanations. Again Marxists have
been asked repeatedly to explain the construction they have
been circulating -- to no avail. Equally important, Sita
Ram Goel invited them to cite any Hindu text which orders
Hindus to break the places of worship of other religions --
as the Bible does, as a pile of Islamic manuals does. He has
asked them to name a single person who has been honoured
by the Hindus because he broke such places -- the way
Islamic historians and lore have glorified every Muslim
ruler and invader who did so. A snooty silence has been
the only response.
But I am on the other point. Once they occupied academic
bodies, once they captured universities and thereby
determined what will be taught, which books will be
prescribed, what questions would be asked, what answers
will be acceptable, these "historians" came to decide what
history had actually been! As it suits their current
convenience and politics to make out that Hinduism also
has been intolerant, they will glide over what Ambedkar
says about the catastrophic effect that Islamic invasions had
on Buddhism, they will completely suppress what he said of
the nature of these invasions and of Muslim rule in his
Thoughts on Pakistan, but insist on reproducing his
denunciations of "Brahmanism," and his view that the
Buddhist India established by the Mauryas was
systematically invaded and finished by Brahmin rulers.
Thus, they suppress facts, they concoct others, they
suppress what an author has said on one matter even as
they insist that what he has said on another be taken as
gospel truth. And when anyone attempts to point out what
had in fact happened, they raise a shriek: a conspiracy to
rewrite history, they shout, a plot to distort history, they
scream. But they are the ones who had distorted it in the
first place -- by suppressing the truth, by planting
falsehoods.
And these "theses" of theirs are recent concoctions. Recall
the question of the disappearance of Buddhist monasteries.
How did the grand-father, so to say, of present Marxist
historians, D. D. Kosambhi explain that extinguishing?
The original doctrine of the Buddha had degenerated into
lamaism, Kosambhi wrote. And the monasteries had
"remained tied to the specialized and concentrated long-
distance 'luxury' trade of which we read in the Periplus.
This trade died out to be replaced by general and simpler
local barter with settled villages. The monasteries, having
fulfilled their economic as well as religious function,
disappeared too." And the people lapsed! "The people
whom they had helped lead out of savagery (though plenty
of aborigines survive in the Western Ghats to this day), to
whom they had given their first common script and
common language, use of iron, and of the plough,"
Kosambhi wrote, "had never forgotten their primeval
cults."