THE DECLINE AND FALL OF BUDDHISM 237
“It cannot be an accident that the Punjab, Kashmir, the district around Behar Sharif, North-East Bengal where Muslims now predominate, were all strong Buddhist Centres in the pre-Muslim days. It will not be fair to suggest that the Buddhists succumbed more easily to political temptations than the Hindus and the change of religion was due to the prospects of the improvement of their political status.”
Unfortunately the causes that have forced the Buddhist population of India to abandon Buddhism in favour of Islam have not been investigated and it is therefore impossible to say how far the persecution of the Brahmanic Kings was responsible for the result. But there are not wanting indications which suggest that this was the principal cause. We have positive evidence of two Kings engaged in the campaign of persecuting the Buddhist population.
The first to be mentioned is Mihirkula. He belonged to the Huns who invaded India about 455 A.D. and established their kingdom in Northern India with Sakala, the modern Sialkot in the Punjab as the capital. Mihirkula ruled about 528 A.D. As Vincent Smith says: [1]
“All Indian traditions agree in representing Mihirkula as a blood thirsty tyrant. ‘The Attila of India’, stained to a more than ordinary degree with ‘implicable cruelty’ noted by historians as characteristic of the Hun temperament.”
Mihirkula, to use the language of Smith, [2] :- “exhibited ferocious hostility against the peaceful Buddhist cult, and remorselessly overthrew the stupas and monasteries, which he plundered of their treasures”.
The other is Sasanka, the King of Eastern India. He ruled about the first decade of the seventh century and was defeated in a conflict with Harsha. In the words of Vincent Smith [3]
“Sansanka, who has been mentioned as the treacherous murderer of Harsha’s brother, and probably was a scion of the Gupta dynasty, was a worshipper of Shiva, hating Buddhism, which he did his best to extirpate. He dug up and burnt the holy Bodhi tree at Buddha Gaya, on which, according to legend, Asoka had lavished inordinate devotion; broke the stone marked with the footprints of Buddha at Pataliputra; destroyed the convents, scattered the monks, carrying his persecutions to the foot of the Nepalese hills”.
The seventh century seems to be a century of religious persecution in India. As Smith points out: [4]
1 Early History of India (1924) p. 336.
2 Ibid p. 337.
3 Ibid p. 360.
4 Ibid F. N. p. 214.