परिशिष्टे ५६५
i2th Century. Commenting on the Muslim invasion, Dr. Ambedkar 58997 that “the religion of the Buddha got the severest blow from the Muslim invasion. They destroyed the Buddhist idols and killed the Bhikkhus. They mistook the great Nalanda University as the fort of the Buddhists and killed a large number of monks thinking that they were soldiers. The few Bhikkhus who escaped the onsiaught fled away to the neighbouring countries like Nepal, Tibet and China.” So whatever was left by the Hindu Kings was destroyed by the Muslims.
That the opponents of n Buddhism among the Hindus did not lag behind in destroying the Buddhist shrines is evident from the heaps of ashes, burnt images and bones of the monks found by the archae- ologists at Sarnath and its neighbourhood. Apparently, the mon- asteries were burnt by the fanatics and this seems to have happened more than once, as says Major Kittoe who carried out excavations at Sarnath in 1851. He says,** “ All has been sacked and burn priests, temples, idols, all together, for in some places, bones, iron, wood, and stone are found in huge masses, and this has happened more than once.”
How some Hindu Yogins exploited the situation created by the Muslim invasion of the Buddhist shrines in Bihar is vividly described by Dharmasvamin, a Tibetan pilgrim, who visited Bihar about three decades after the catastrophe. According to him, Ratnabodhi, the biggest library at Nalanda, which had escaped destruction at the hands of the Muslims, was burnt by Hindu mendicants. He says “they (Hindus) performed a Yajna, fire sacrifice, and threw living embers and ashes from the sacrifice pit into the Buddhisttemples etc. This produced a great conflagration which consumed Ratnabodhi, the nine-storeyed library of the Nalanda University. ***""
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* Speech of Colombo, Sri Lank on 29 May 1950.
** The Gazetteer of India, Indian Union-Country and People, 1965, P.452.
*#* Buddh Prakash, Aspeet of Indian History and Civilization, Agra, 1965. P. 213, Also see Tibetan Texi-Pag-Sam-Jan-Zang. ed. Sarat Chandra Das. P. 92 cited in ‘Mediaval School of Indian logic’ by S.C. Vidhyabhushan. P. 146.
1 ; Ahir, P. 31-33.