CHAPTER 9
The Decline and Fall of Buddhism.
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar had written “The Decline and Fall of Buddhism”, as a part of the treatise, ‘Revolution and Counter- Revolution’. We have found only 5 pages in our papers which were not even corrected. Copy of this essay has been received from Shri S. S. Rege, which shows some corrections in Dr. Ambedkar’s handwriting. This essay is of 18 typed pages which is included here. — Editors,
I
The disappearance of Buddhism from India has been a matter of great surprize to everybody who cares to think about the subject and is also a matter of regret. But it lives in China, Japan, Burma, Siam, Annam, Indo-China, Ceylon and parts of Malaya-Archipalego. In India alone, it has ceased to exist. Not only it has ceased to live in India but even the name of Buddha has gone out of memory of most Hindus. How could such a thing have happened ? This is an important question for which there has been no satisfactory answer. Not only there is no satisfactory answer, nobody has made an attempt to arrive at a satisfactory answer. In dealing with this subject people fail to make a very important distinction. It is a distinction between the fall of Buddhism and the decline of Buddhism. It is necessary to make this distinction because the fall of Buddhism is one, the reasons for which are very different from those which brought about its downfall. For the fall is due to quite obvious causes while the reasons for its decline are not quite so obvious.
There can be no doubt that the fall of Buddhism in India was due to the invasions of the Musalmans. 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 what the derivation of the word ‘ But’ is ‘But’ is the Arabic corruption of Buddha. Thus the origin of the word indicates that in the Moslem mind idol worship