Buddhism extinct in Bharath?

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

On Fri, 26 Sep 1997, Nanda Kumar wrote:

> >If we look at Tibetan Buddhism which is the nearest in shape and form
> >to what Indian Buddhism was before it became extinct
>
> Is it really true? Aren't there any Buddhist monastries in India which
> teach Buddha's original teachings? I've read that during the reign of the
> Pallava kings there was a strong attempt to spread Buddhism in Southern
> India? One thing that I find strange is that the Emperor Ashoka when he
> sent missionaries to spread Buddism to Sri Lanka, they must have
> passed thru Southern India. So how come they didn't spread it there? Or
> was it that Sanatana Dharma was already too entrenched out there?

We span some two millenia here. Asoka lived and propagated Buddhism in the
2nd century BCE. The Pallavas lived in the 7th century CE. That apart,
there is architectural evidence for the presence of Buddhism in south
India till about the 13th century or so. Buddha images have been found
in Kanchipuram, dating to 12th and 13th centuries CE. Bodhidharma, the
eventual father of the Chan/Zen school, is legendarily supposed to have
been a south Indian, although another tradition puts him in central Asia.
Cola kings endowed Buddhist monasteries in Nagapattinam, in the 10th
century CE, and the Pala kings similarly endowed Buddhist monasteries in
Bengal. However, going by the numbers of texts and names of teachers from
the later times, it is evident that Buddhism declined in India, by a
significant extent, in the post-Sankaran period (after 8th century CE).
Jainism, on the other hand, continued to flourish in south India, in Tamil
Nadu and Karnataka.

>
> I was reading the forward of a book by a Russian lady on Sankara and
> there she quotes TMP Mahadevan saying that Buddhism and Advaitam
> shouldn't be considered as two seperate schools of thought, rather
> should be considered as different stages in the process towards the
> ultimate goal.

With Buddhism as a stepping stone to Advaita, no doubt. Sri TMP Mahadevan
is using standard Indian rhetoric, in which another tradition is
hierarchically subsumed under one's own, as a preparatory stage for the
final teaching. I don't think the Buddhists would be too happy about it!

Vidyasankar