The extermination of Buddhism and Jainism in India

There are many Hindu references to support this looting and plunder including the unedited versions of the original Puranas even though most Buddhist and Jain accounts were destroyed. Hiuen-Tsang, who visited India from 629 to 645 AD, describes the influence of a south Indian Brahmin queen on her husband who ordered the execution of many thousand Buddhists including 8,000 in Madurai alone. Kalhana’s Rajatarangani (written by a Shaivite scholar about 1149 AD and the first Brahmin account of India’s historic past from the time of Yudishthira) relates that Mihirikula, the Hun ruler was converted by Brahmins (in 515 AD) and unleashed a wave of violent destruction on Buddhist monasteries in Punjab and Kashmir. He reports (verse 290 in book 1) that “crows and birds of prey would fly ahead eager to feed on those within his armies reach”. He proudly proclaimed himself as the killer of three crores.

This spawned a revival. Later, Brahmins paid killers to assassinate the Buddhist ruler Harshavardhana. With the plot discovered, as a Buddhist, he was unwilling to take life and so banished those 500 Brahmins involved in the conspiracy to a remote area south of the Vindhyas. Brahmins needed money for their purposes. Kalhan reports that several avaricious Hindu rulers looted the treasuries and even burned Hindu temples of the Shahi and Katoch rulers in neighboring areas long before the well known looting by the Muslim Mahmud Ghazni.

According to The Rajatarangani (IV/112), Chandradip, a Buddhist ruler of Kashmir, was killed by Brahmins in 722 AD. His successor Tarapida was killed two years later. The newly anointed Brahma-Kshastra (Rajput) rulers usurped power in the kingdoms of Sind and Kota. Graha Varman Maukhari, married to Harsha’s sister, was treacherously killed by Sasanka, king of Gauda (Bengal). He proudly destroyed many stupas and cut down the sacred Bodhi tree at Gaya.

According to Gopinath Rao (East & West Vol. 35) the old tribal shrine at Jaganath Puri was usurped by Vaisnavas and the walls of the temple even today displays gory murals recording the beheading and massacre of Buddhists.

Epigraphica India Vol XXIX P 141-144 records that Vira Goggi Deva, a South Indian king, described himself as… “a fire to the Jain scriptures, a hunter of wild beasts in the form of the followers of Jina (Jains) and an adept at the demolition of Buddhist canon”. It also records “the deliberate destruction of non Brahminical literature like books of Lokayat/ Carvaca philosophy by Brihaspati mentioned by Albaruni in the 11th century.”

The huge Buddhist complex at Nagarjunakonda was destroyed. According to Shankara Dig Vijaya, the newly anointed Brahma-Kshastra kings ordered every Kshatriya to kill every Buddhist young and old and to also kill those who would not kill the Buddhists. A Jain temple at Huli in Karnataka had a statue of five Jinas (Jain heroes) that was re carved into a Shaivite temple with five lingas.

E.S Oakley (in his ‘Holy Himalaya’) Rhys Davids (in ‘Buddhist India’) and Daniel Wright (in ‘History of Nepal’) quote several Nepalese and Kumoani documents showing that Buddhism had been the prevailing religion of the Himalayas with Badrinath and Kedarnath as Buddhist temples until Shankaracharya (788 -820 AD) usurped them in the 8th century and the shrines at Badri and Kedar were then converted into shrines of Shiv and Vishnu.

Several Nepalese accounts state that the followers of Buddha were ruthlessly persecuted, slain, exiled and forcibly converted – many converted rather than face death, humiliation or exile. The attackers tested their faith by making them perform ‘Hinsa’, or the sacrifice of live animals, that was so abhorrent to Buddhists and Jains. Many bhikshunis, or Buddhist nuns, were forcibly married and the learned Grihasthas were forced to cut off the distinguishing knot of hair on top of their heads. 84,000 Buddhist works were searched for and destroyed.

It is believed that Shankara introduced pilgrimages to those new Hindu holy places in the Himalayas for the first time to prevent their relapse into Buddhist or animist ways. As sufficient local Brahmins could not be found who were willing to preach in such remote places he imported Nambudri Brahmin priests from Kerala who, to this day, officiate at Badrinath, and Kedarnath.

https://karthiknavayan.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/ow-the-buddhists-and-jains-were-persecuted-in-ancient-india/